Then I turned the engine over and headed for my office. Wound my window down on the way there. The air rushed around me coolly, bringing me properly awake.
At least I’d be able to watch the sun rise. But how many dawns did any of us have left?
Something else was nagging at me, gnawing like a rodent at the edges of my consciousness. I couldn’t get a handle on it, though.
A faint, silvery-gray line had appeared on the horizon when I parked in Union Square. The darkness had not faded yet but it was going to, and soon. A soft breeze was still blowing and the banners that had been strung up all flapped around like living things. Their lettering wavered as I stared at it.
And that was when it finally hit me, so obvious it almost struck me dumb. Saruak drew his strength from us, from our perception of him. And if that turned into a massed, collective one …
This was something people really needed to be warned about.
I climbed the stairs, wondering if any of the powers-that-be were up and around at this time of the morning.
The answer came before I’d even opened up my door. The phone was ringing on the desk inside.
I hurried in and grabbed at the receiver, to be greeted by a familiar voice.
“You wish to meet with us, Devries?” Judge Levin asked me.
He felt no need to announce himself. How long had they been watching me? Did they already know?
“Yes, I do,” I told him, although I made sure not to sound too deferential about it.
It’s never wise to throw your lot in wholly with the Sycamore Hill crowd. They have their own agendas, mostly to do with status and position. And us humbler folk, the way they see it, our job is to serve those ends.
But sometimes, they’re the only game in town, especially when it comes to the kind of threat that I was dealing with. And out of them, the judge was one of the most reliable. He had some kind of a moral code, at least.
“It’s agreed then,” he told me quietly. “A few of us will be gathering at Gaspar’s place within the next half hour. We’ll look forward to seeing you there.”
TWENTY-TWO
The huge, wrought-iron gates to Gaspar Vernon’s mansion were open when I finally arrived. Its grounds stretched out beyond them, as motionless in the dimness as some vast oil painting. The three-headed dog that usually guarded the place was nowhere to be seen, thank God. I wondered what size kennel they put that thing in.
I followed a driveway of fine reddish gravel toward the portico. My gaze kept flickering around the entire time. I barely ever came up here.
This was nothing like the seething mess Raine Manor’s gardens had become. Perfectly trimmed lawns as neat as golfing greens stretched out around me in the pre-dawn light. There were even, when I looked a little closer, croquet hoops out there. Every verge was filled with flowering shrubs, or elegant topiary cut into the shapes of mythic beasts. I went by a phoenix, and a Minotaur. They looked so real that I half-expected them to wake up, like Raine’s gargoyles had done. Man, that would have really made my day.
The house itself was low and broad, and built along classical lines. The portico had Grecian pillars. Several cars were parked out front. Judge Levin’s pale cream Bentley was there. And I thought I recognized the classic Porsche right next to it.
The front door opened as I walked toward it, although not by any magic this time. Vernon’s butler was standing there, a rigid little silver-haired man in a funereal black suit and a shirt with a winged collar. I never had found out his name. His head was tipped back very slightly, so that he could stare at me more easily along the bridge of his hooked nose. His lips bunched up as I approached, becoming even more bloodless.
“Glad you could make it in such good time, Mr. Devries,” he announced, unconvincingly. He didn’t sound particularly glad about anything. “If you would kindly follow me?”
He led me off into the mansion’s depths.
I was soon surrounded by an aged elegance. The tiles under my feet were white marble. The urns along the walls were all Minoan. A statue of Hermes would have been raising its arms toward the heavens, if it’d still had any left. Some of the lyres and flutes in their display cases long pre-dated Christ. Their owner hadn’t purchased any of this stuff, since there was nowhere in town you could get hold of it. He had simply conjured it up, using photographs in books and magazines for reference.
Gaspar Vernon – as I have already mentioned – was a classical scholar among other things. A patron of the arts. A connoisseur of fine wines, and a superb cook. All of which made you wonder why he presented himself to the outside world the way he did.
We reached a door, at last, no different from the dozens of others we’d been going past. But the butler raised one slender hand and rapped it with his knuckles. Then, without waiting for an answer, he pushed the handle down and ushered me inside.
There was a study in there, quite small for a place like this. Just one weak lamp was switched on, over in the corner. Don’t ask me why, but major adepts always seem to prefer clinging to the shadows. Sinking back into them, getting partly lost, however powerful they have become. It’s not simply a conceit on their part. More as though the deeper into witchcraft that they get, the more darkness becomes a part of them.
There were four of them seated behind the broad desk in here. They were reduced to partial silhouettes. I recognized them, all the same.
At the center of the group, standing out the way a buffalo might do in a cabbage patch, was the owner of all that I’d surveyed, Gaspar Vernon himself. He was as tall as me, but a good deal burlier. His flat-topped head was largely bald, and he wore a drooping, off-white moustache. He had on what he always did, a checkered shirt, the sleeves rolled up as though for business. Doubtless a pair of blue jeans as well. The desk was hiding them. A corn cob pipe hung, unlit, from his mouth. It was unfilled, in fact. Frankly, he looked like some kind of hick.
Who did he think he was fooling? I already knew he was a cultured, educated man. But Gaspar Vernon hailed from woodsman stock. The lumber mill out on the edge of town was the business that had built up the start of his family’s fortune. By his manner and the way he dressed, he never seemed to let himself forget that. Nor anybody else, for that matter.
Sitting to his right was his close friend and peer, Judge Samuel Levin. I knew his history as well. His people had been Dutch-German tinkers, living on the edge of town, back in the Salem days. They’d come a good long way since then.
The man was only five foot four, and was as narrow as a snowflake’s chance in summer. But as usual, he was immaculately turned out, right down to the manicured gleam of his fingernails. His thumbs were tented underneath his chin. Cufflinks glinted at his wrists. His hair was thick and black, with only the lightest dusting of silver in it. His eyes were slightly narrowed, and they studied me intently from behind the rimless spectacles he wore.
Off to his side was Kurt van Friesling, number one son of the town’s most aristocratic family after the Raines. He was in his late thirties, blond and handsome in a rather flat-faced way, with eyes so very pale a blue they looked like spots of water. He had thick lips that carried an ironic twist around with them. Back in his own wild youth, he’d been a leading member of Woodard Raine’s rat pack. But these days he’d transformed himself into a responsible citizen, and took the town’s well-being very much to heart.
At the far end – even deeper in the shadows – was a woman in her forties with her hair piled up. This was either Cynthia McGinley or her sister, Dido. They were not twins, but looked so similar they might as well have been. Spinsters both, they presented themselves to the outside world like they were the last word in gentility.
I had watched them turn a man who’d welched on a gambling debt into a pool of molten slurry, once. He had been still alive and had screamed non-stop. Gaspar here had made them change him back, but they had only done it grudgingly.
Whichever this one was, she had intense green eyes that followed me like a cougar’s. T
he rest of her face could barely be made out at all.
I felt my windpipe tighten a little. All four of them were gazing at me closely, not a smile anywhere to be seen. There was a chair already set out for me, but I stopped short of it.
“Well, don’t just stand there!” Vernon rumbled around the stem of his pipe.
He never merely said anything. He roared it or he growled it. Or, if agitated, spat it out.
“Sit down, man! Sit down!”
So I did that.
I was still wondering what they were all doing up at this time of the day. A closer look provided me with the most likely answer. Their eyes were red rimmed and they all looked drawn. I guessed they hadn’t been to bed at all, last night. They must have been at the hospital. Not that they’d have been treating any wounds. I’ve already explained how magic generally cannot do that. But they’d have been helping any way they could, I had no doubt.
They had the slightly pummeled expressions of people who had tried their best and been found lacking. Just how many casualties, I wondered, hadn’t been as lucky as Cass?
There were rows of massive books, on artwork mostly, on the shelves behind them. I studied them a moment, then my gaze went back to the four faces in front of me and held there, waiting.
“No one ever tell you that it’s rude to stare?” Vernon inquired.
For some reason, he had never particularly liked me. I made a small motion with my shoulders, keeping my expression blank
“Land’s sake, Devries! Every time I meet with you, it’s like an object lesson in disrespect. Why don’t you just tell us what you think is going on?”
“In your own time,” Judge Levin put in, his tone more generous than his companion’s.
So I did precisely that, recounting everything I had found out. For once, they all listened intently and they didn’t interrupt.
“Let me get this straight,” Vernon grunted, once I’d finished up. “You’re telling us this Saruak is deriving power from the people in this town?”
“That’s the Little Girl’s opinion.”
“That brat?” he snorted.
They had always been suspicious of her, and perhaps rather afraid, since she was such an unknown quantity.
“Tell us what you think,” Judge Levin asked.
I leant back. “He’s struck where he wants, whenever he wants. I know that. He’s done enormous harm. And now? The people have a name to put to all the shapeless fear that’s gathered. It doesn’t look random in any way. I’d say it’s all part of his plan.”
“To what end?”
“The Reunion Evening.”
“What?” van Friesling blurted.
So I explained it to them calmly.
“Believe it or not, the mayor got it right. He told me what everybody will be thinking. ‘If it works this time, then we can get away from Saruak.’”
I glanced around at them.
“Everyone’ll have that foremost in their minds, when they turn up for the ceremony.”
“And …?”
“The larger he is in our thoughts, the stronger he becomes. Everyone who uses magic, gathered in one place? It’s the perfect opportunity for him.”
They took that in slowly and uncertainly.
“And what do you reckon we should do about it?” Vernon asked.
“Call it off.”
“And if people still show up, and try to hold it on their own?”
Which they might do, I conceded.
“Stop them. Use force if necessary.”
It was Levin’s turn to get annoyed. His spectacles flashed in the dim lighting.
“Outlaw free association? Whatever else the Landing might be, this is still America. Besides, if most of the town shows up, we won’t have the manpower.”
The woman beside them leant abruptly forward till the details of her face became apparent. Oh yes, this was Cynthia. Dido had suffered a mild stroke last year that made her left eyelid droop.
Her mouth was crumpled up and her brow furrowed. She looked like she wanted to sneer in my face, and only her upbringing was preventing her
“Why should we take your word, sir, or that of some maladjusted child? Reunion Evening has become our town’s oldest tradition.”
And its most useless, I pointed out.
“All right, let’s look at what we genuinely know,” Judge Levin intervened. “We already have proof of what this Saruak is capable of. And I guess we’re pretty certain what he is. He has this thing with him as well, this … Dalek?”
“Dralleg.”
“Quite. We’re in no doubt of the havoc that this pair can wreak. But to take over the entire town?”
“Is that really likely?” Vernon asked. “We’re talking about thousands of people, after all.”
At which point, I felt myself groan inwardly. I’d been here plenty of times before.
The constant use of magic, as I’ve noted, leaves you detached from the real world. And these guys, for all their wealth and power, sometimes weren’t much of a step up from Woodard Raine. They approached reality cautiously, as if it might turn around and bite them any moment. If me and Cassie moved or thought as slowly as they did, we’d have both been dead a long time back.
They seemed to sense my irritation – they were that aware, at least.
“Is there any possibility of talking with this Saruak?” Levin asked. “Persuading him to back off? It’s an option.”
I reminded him about the Manitou’s penchant for trickery. And added, “Best of luck with that.”
His face went hard as granite.
“There is another way,” put in Kurt van Friesling, before an argument broke out.
I looked across at him. And he was smiling at me very gently.
“The real problem, as I understand it, is in finding him. He’s not strong enough, yet, that he’s invulnerable – correct?”
“Perhaps.”
“Which is a matter I’ve been working on.”
That certainly captured my attention. Everybody else’s, too.
Kurt produced a bag from underneath the desk and pulled out something that looked, at first, like a large compass. It seemed to be a jet black disc of stone, with golden symbols engraved round its edge. I looked at them closer and concluded they were letters in some cabalistic script.
At the center, for a needle, was a spike-thin dragon, also made of gleaming gold and with bright, tiny crystals for its eyes, its forked tongue poking out.
It swiveled round till it was pointing due east of here.
I stiffened in my chair, my nerves singing a little. He had obviously been doing some research. And had he discovered a way to find our newcomer?
“I say to hell with negotiation,” Kurt went on, a little more vehemently. “Too much blood has already been spilled for that. I say hunt him down and finish him. Who’s with me?”
Levin’s features became very thoughtful. Vernon’s eyes went dull a moment, then began to smolder. He bit down on his pipe stem.
They were all – I could see – starting to come around to the idea, their earlier reserve forgotten.
Cynthia McGinley cleared her throat, and then said, “Count me in.”
She stared in my direction, her predatory green gaze seeming to devour me.
“You?”
I felt as surprised as anyone by this new development, but I nodded.
What else was I going to do? Ever since I’d first met Saruak, I had been waiting for a chance like this.
TWENTY-THREE
Only Kurt came back outside with me. I wondered what the rest were going to do. He tossed me a set of keys and nodded to the black Porsche 911, which was sitting on the gravel with its roof down, looking like a cross between a bullfrog and a fighter plane.
“You drive,” he told me. Then, by way of explanation, “I’ll need both my hands.”
For what? But he seemed eager to get on with it, whatever it might be.
Above us, the sky had grown slightly lighter
than it had been when I’d gone inside. The sun had not come up as yet, but it was due. The whole eastern horizon was tinged with paler shades of dimness and then, along the world’s edge, a soft band of platinum appeared, growing as I watched.
Another crow, or perhaps a grackle, just a tiny cut-out shape, flapped out of a little copse of trees and wheeled toward the growing light. The town lay motionless below us, its roads empty and its windows black. The streetlamps crisscrossing it shone like distant candles, the whole place slumbering and unaware.
I wondered what kind of dreams the people down were there having. Ugly ones, I would imagine, centered round the same events.
The wind up here was stronger, cooler, than below. I shivered slightly as I approached the car. Or maybe that was the adrenaline. This might be the morning that we finally gave Saruak the unpleasant reception he’d been asking for since he’d arrived.
I climbed into the driver’s seat. Turned the key and put my foot lightly on the gas. Felt my pulse race a little as the engine’s vibrations ran through me. I never got that sensation from my Caddy.
Thankfully, there was a manual shift – I’ve never much liked automatics. I went up swiftly through the gears as we headed back out past the gate.
Van Friesling set the black stone disc down carefully on the dashboard. Its needle was still pointing where it first had done, toward the east.
“I follow it?” I asked.
“What else? It’s precisely like a compass, but is drawn to supernatural forces rather than magnetic north.”
My own excitement didn’t seem to be affecting him a great deal. Kurt had always been the languid type, that translating to an air of coolness when he’d been a teenager. He settled back into his leather seat, his whole expression calm, relaxed.
We were just starting down the hill, when a low thudding noise behind us made me glance up in the rearview mirror. And I’m pretty sure my jaw dropped open at that point.
I could see the Vernon mansion back there, of course. It was just as dim and still as every other building in my field of view. Except that three of the windows in the topmost story had, all at once, come blasting open. And the objects that came surging out …
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