Now Colin was—officially—on sabbatical from Taghkanic. In fact, he was lecturing at San Francisco State this winter, dividing his time between that and the bookstore.
The Ancient Mysteries Bookstore had been founded in 1979, but it had been failing for the usual reasons that plagued small business when Claire had found it for Colin on a preliminary trip West last summer. Colin had invested some money—be—coming part-owner—and taken over the management a few months ago. His plan was to make the store something of a community center, and so far the idea had worked admirably. Now more than ever before, there was a free exchange of ideas and goals among the Lightworkers of the Bay Area.
To Claire’s mild surprise, Colin had even accepted Cassie Chandler’s presence without demur, though Cassie was working with a group called Circle of Fire, a Blackburn Workgroup operating in the East Bay. How Thorne would laugh if he knew! He hated dogma, and they’ve taken his work and made it into a set of regulations that have to be followed precisely. If there was anything that could bring him back from the dead, it would be that … .
It was ironic that where Thorne Blackburn had once tried and failed, Colin had succeeded with the Ancient Mysteries Bookshop. Colin had asked her to manage the place, and had hired several of the local members of the occult community as additional staff, as he did not wish to tie himself down to being in the store on a regular schedule. Claire worked in the store on Mondays and Fridays, as her schedule of classes permitted.
She’d worried that returning to the places she’d known with Peter would bring her pain, but to her surprise—and regret—the pain was not as overpowering as she’d feared. Peter was with the angels now, and Claire could go on with her life without an overwhelming burden of grief. But she’d been concerned about facing a familiar landscape with too much time on her hands, and so she’d arranged to work toward a degree in psychology at San Francisco State. Most of the credits that had earned Claire her RN could still be transferred, even at this late date. She’d started last fall and was already well embarked on earning a master’s degree in psychology.
Claire was a little surprised at how much pleasure the coursework gave her. The world had changed a great deal in the quarter of a century since she’d entered nursing school. Most women expected to have careers now, even after marriage, and nobody thought of them as emotionally-stunted man-haters. The change had been so gradual that only in looking back could it be seen at all.
I suppose all change is like that. Gradual. Who would have thought, in those days that Colin and I were visiting Thorne on this very block, that we’d be back here and running an occult bookstore that has more in common with the old Voice of Truth than not?
She shook her head fondly. Life, in the words of the philosopher, was not only stranger than they imaged, it was also stranger than they could imagine.
At that moment, Claire felt the familiar summons to mindfulness. A slender, dark-haired woman had paused at the display of lurid secondhand paperbacks that were racked outside the front of the store. She hesitated over them for a moment, her whole aspect that of someone who is searching for something unknown, then made her selection and walked into the store, holding the book out before her as if it were radioactive.
She was obviously a professional woman, slightly out of place in this bohemian neighborhood. Her short dark hair was cut in a practical bob, and her pale grey suit, with the small “good” gold brooch on the lapel, was pure “Dress for Success.” Someone less likely to pick up one of the tattered two-bit paperbacks sitting out in front of the bookstore was hard to imagine, though the woman had the faintly wild-eyed look of one whose life had recently been disturbed by a brush with the Unseen. For some reason the sight of her struck a chord of recognition in Claire’s mind, though it was too faint to follow up.
Claire glimpsed the title as she set it down: Those Incredible Poltergeists. One of Jock Cannon’s books, God rest his soul.
“That’s not at all a bad book,” Claire said gently.
“I don’t know much about it,” the stranger said gruffly. “Is this book—er—reliable?”
Bingo, Claire thought to herself. Her visitor looked to be in her late twenties, old enough—just possibly—to be the mother of a child poltergeist, but somehow Claire did not get the sense that this was that sort of problem.
“I’m out of the Margrave and Anstey monograph just now, but this—” Claire picked up a copy of Dion Fortune’s Psychic Self Defense and tendered it toward the stranger “—is very common-sensical.”
The woman recoiled faintly at the sight of the cover, which even Claire had to admit was nearly as sensational as that of the tattered paperback. She set the book back down on the counter. Obviously, her customer wasn’t yet quite desperate enough to grasp at any straw, as yet.
“I have Nandor Fodor’s On the Trail of the Poltergeist, too—if you want to wade through a lot of psychoanalytical twaddle,” she offered, and saw the woman’s face relax at a name she recognized.
“I’ll take that one,” she said. Relief lightened her voice to a husky contralto.
Claire’s subjective hunch had been right: this woman was either a psychologist or psychiatrist. She went into the back room to find a copy—Colin had sold the last one the day before, and they only managed to keep the out-of-print volume in stock by buying up used copies.
When Claire came back the woman was looking through one of the books on reincarnation, an expression of distaste on her face, much as if she’d caught one of the church elders dancing naked in the street. When Claire handed her the Fodor, the woman all-but-flung payment at Claire for the two books and rushed out without another word.
Claire picked up the book she’d been leafing through. Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, the title read, by another credentialed psychologist. Claire looked after the woman, a troubled frown on her face. She knew that they would meet again. She only hoped that it wouldn’t be too late for either of them.
“Hey, Claire—have you heard? Greenhaven’s been sold … again!”
April was a month filled with sunshowers and blustery winds; not even the canopy over the street was enough to save the sale table books from damage. Frodo was sorting through them, trying to decide which ones were too damaged to sell.
So that’s who that woman was. She had no proof, but in her heart Claire had no doubt that the young woman who’d come to the store to get information on poltergeists was the same one who had come to take over Greenhaven. And this one, Claire hoped, would stay.
Greenhaven had been sold three times since Alison’s death a year ago March, but the house had seemed unable to find its match. Tenants never seemed to stay more than a few months—or, in the case of Kathleen Carmody’s sister, Betty, weeks—be—fore the house was back on the market.
I wonder if Alison is restless?
Alison Margrave had died without naming a successor. After Simon’s accident, and his gradual turning away from the Path, Alison had repudiated him formally, severing the magickal link of master and chela that bound them. It had been too late for her to find someone else to carry on after her; she had died unhappy, unfulfilled.
“Hey, Claire?” Frodo said.
“Hm? I was just wondering if this one would last. Do you know who it is?” Have you found your successor, Alison? Is she the one?
“Um … my dad heard from the realtor, but he didn’t get a lot of details. A doctor, I think. I heard she’d be moving in there in May.”
“Well, she’ll get our best weather, then,” Claire said peaceably. Maybe she’ll stay.
As they talked the bookstore filled with its usual Monday visitors. Far from discouraging what other retailers called “museum shoppers”—people who treated stores like museums, with contents that could be viewed but not purchased—Colin and Claire welcomed them for the sake of strengthening the flourishing occult community here in San Francisco.
And just in time, Claire mused, if Simon’s back in town and Greenhaven has a new t
enant.
As if to illustrate the truth of her words, the day seemed to darken as a figure appeared in the doorway. Claire looked up, and felt the shock of recognition as a hammerblow to the heart.
Speak of the devil and hear the sound of his wings … .
Claire had not seen Simon since the day of Alison’s funeral, and then not closely. The scars were white and sunken now, though he still wore the eyepatch. His hair had gone prematurely grey, making him look much older than his forty-one years, and there were harsh lines bracketing his mouth.
He hesitated in the doorway, as if he were uncertain whether he should go in or not, but then he realized Claire had seen him. Almost reflexively his shoulders straightened, and he strode into the bookstore like an actor taking the stage.
“Claire. I’d heard you and Colin had come back,” Simon said in his deep resonant voice.
“That’s right,” Claire said, forcing herself to be calm. “I see you’re back as well.”
She wished she didn’t feel so very much like a mouse that had attracted the attention of a large hungry cat. The thought brought with it the memory of the persistent rumors that had gathered around Simon in the years since his accident—dark, unpleasant rumors of torture and blood magick, almost impossible for Claire to reconcile with the memory of the daredevil boy she’d once known.
“Poor Claire,” Simon said mockingly. “Did you tiptoe home thinking that I’d gone for good? San Francisco is my home, too—and I’ll not be driven out.”
“Nobody’s trying to drive you out, Simon,” Claire said reasonably. “And as for my motives in coming back, I honestly didn’t give you a thought.”
Simon laughed. “I can hardly believe that, when you took such pains to preach your gospel of praiseworthy submission to me while I lay helpless. I should have realized that you wouldn’t give up so easily.”
“Which way do you want it, Simon?” Claire snapped, feeling her temper fray. “Did I come back hoping you were gone, or was I supposed to be hoping to find you here? You can’t have it both ways.”
Everyone in the bookstore was watching them. Claire gritted her teeth.
“Can’t I?” Simon purred. “But I’ve told you that nothing is impossible to the trained will. I warn you, Claire, if you think to take up where you left off in ’73, you will find me a worthier opponent this time. I will not hold with your continued meddling interference in my destiny—nor Colin’s. I assume that now that he’s back he intends to tilt once more at the windmills of virtue? Does he still hold his narrow-minded, racist views on the colors of magick?”
“Did you come here to deliver a warning or just to posture?” Claire demanded, getting to her feet. “If Colin MacLaren were to interfere in my life, I would get down on my knees and thank God for my good fortune! Like any bully you can’t stand being wrong—black, green, or purple, that wickedness you’re dabbling in is Evil.”
Her plain speaking didn’t seem to faze Simon. In fact, he looked rather pleased at the reaction he’d gotten out of her.
“I had such high hopes for you once, my dear. But I see you’ve given in entirely to that sanctimonious old fraud. I believe the expression is ‘blinded by the Light.’ There is no difference between Black and White Magick—only the Will of the trained Adept acting upon the Material World. All else is antique superstition. I would have thought that you, at least, would have put it behind you, though perhaps I should not expect as much from a tired old man.”
Claire gasped, literally stricken speechless by the effrontery of Simon’s statement. He had changed in the ten years since his injury—even with seeing him at the memorial service, she had not realized how much until this moment. The constant pain he was in had forged a darkness, a hardness in his spirit that frightened her more than she would allow herself to know.
She realized she dared not let this go on; she was shaking with rage, and at any moment, she might say something that she regretted. “Simon,” Claire said evenly, “you are a damned fool, with the emphasis on damned.” She got to her feet and walked back to the storeroom on trembling legs.
“—if I’d stayed another moment I’d have picked up my Psychology text and brained him with it,” Claire said ruefully. “And a pretty bit of gossip that would have made.”
The two friends were met over tea in the living room of Colin’s cramped and cluttered apartment, one of four in a remodeled Victorian a few blocks from the bookstore. It bore, Claire thought, a certain family resemblance to every place Colin had ever lived: a jackdaw’s nest of books and papers, strewn about in no appreciable pattern. Despite the fact that he had been here since the end of October, half-unpacked cartons of books and papers were still scattered about every room.
“I’m afraid that no matter where Simon is, there’s going to be gossip,” Colin said. “But you handled that as well as anyone could have.”
“Well, I just wish he’d go away!” Claire snapped. “Don’t you?” The paperweight that Alison had given Colin stood on a windowsill, its silver sword gleaming in the sun. Claire’s eyes were drawn toward it. If she’d had it yesterday, she’d probably have flung it at Simon. Her fingers itched in anticipation of its weight. She’d like to throw something at Simon … .
“No,” said Colin unexpectedly. “I hope he stays.”
“But Colin,” Claire protested, startled. “You can’t think he’ll listen to you! You didn’t hear him yesterday—he hates you.”
“I think he’s afraid of me,” Colin corrected gently. “But no matter how deranged Simon has become—and I think that anyone who chooses to embrace the Shadow is certainly mad in a sense—he knows that I would never hurt him. So there’s something else he’s afraid of.”
“Afraid that you can help him?” Claire suggested eagerly. She’d heard of the condition in her classes: since the human mind hated change and uncertainty above all other things, people would often reject help—and hope—choosing to suffer rather than to accept the possibility of change.
“Can you help him, Colin?”
“I hope so,” Colin said, seeing his hope reflected on Claire’s face. “But I must resign myself to the fact that in this situation, I am only an instrument of the Light, intervening at its good pleasure.” And he did not know yet whether he would be permitted to interfere with Simon’s self-chosen destruction at all.
Was this Simon’s test—or his?
But Simon, grave though his problems were, was not their only concern that spring.
Truth was the common currency of the New Age; truth and honesty were the only tools Lightworkers had to build a common language with the mundane world outside their own fraternity. In the materialistic eighties, the search for spiritual truths came with a hefty price tag attached. With money to be had, the frauds and exploiters gathered like sharks, and Colin battled those threats with fierce defensiveness. Any force which devalued truth, which made the followers of New Age doctrines seem that they were attempting to cheat their mundane brethren, was something that attacked the principles of solidarity that Colin worked toward.
That was one of the reasons Colin had agreed to allow a local Spiritualist group to meet at the store once a month. Personally he found their doctrine puerile and essentially unconvincing, as well as far outside what was, in the last quarter of the twentieth century, the mainstream of occult thought. But it was no use to complain that people drank the dirty water if there was no possibility of their getting clean. Better a Spiritualist Church, which allowed people free access to what purported to be the spirits of their departed friends and relatives, than a storefront “psychic” who would charge them hundreds of dollars for a collection of vaudeville mentalist tricks.
He had given the Spiritualists fair warning that he would unmask any frauds he found among the mediums who exercised their gift at the bookstore. But Heaven defend me from the “well-meaning” self-professed “psychic,” whose sincere self-delusions cause so much grief to those who believe in them and follow their advice in medical an
d financial matters. Sometimes I wonder which is worse: honest unbelieving greed or self-aggrandizing self-delusion....
Colin finished arranging the chairs around the table and debated whether he should set up the fan. It was warm for the beginning of May, and once the curtain cutting the back room off from the shop was drawn, the room would have no ventilation. It would probably get pretty warm back here.
Let it. The séances—there were usually two or three mediums each time—would probably not run more than a couple of hours. It was a weeknight, after all, and things didn’t usually get started until after seven.
“Colin?” He heard the jingle of the front door and Claire’s voice. A moment later she poked her head through the half-drawn curtain.
“That looks nice.” She had a brown bag in one arm and a white bakery box dangling from the other hand. “We were out of coffee, so I stopped at the corner market up the block and got some, and then I decided to stop at the bakery. I know Kathleen usually brings something, but the cookies looked so good … .”
“Let me help,” Colin said, coming forward to take the unwieldy box from her.
“You stay out of those until afterward,” Claire scolded fondly. “Come on. You can help me set up the coffee urn.”
To avoid distraction for the mediums, the table that would hold the coffee urn and the desserts for afterward had been set up in the stockroom. Unlike Claire’s store back in Glastonbury, the Ancient Mysteries Bookshop sold only new and used occult books, so there were no herbs and oils back here to worry about—just a bunch of half-open cartons and untidy piles of secondhand books from book searches and used bookstores, organized (more or less) on a number of rickety bookshelves.
Claire carried her bag of groceries into the back; when this had been a private home, this section had been the kitchen, and there was a sink here. The percolator—a large one, with a thirty-cop capacity—stood beside the sink, waiting. Claire tucked the quart of milk into the tiny dorm-sized refrigerator under the counter, and then rummaged around until she found the can opener and attacked the tin of coffee.
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