A movement to the left caught my eye. A robed figure had appeared and was standing just outside the entrance to the cubicle. The hood covered the man's face, and his hands and arms were folded inside the flowing sleeves of the robe. He nodded to Krowl, but didn't speak. Number Two had arrived, and we were obviously in a holding pattern. My stomach muscles knotted painfully, and for a moment I was afraid I was going to be sick.
Krowl acknowledged the other man's presence with a brief movement of his head, then turned his attention back to me. "It was all in the tarot cards," he said absently. "Except that you almost brought me bad luck."
"I remember something about disaster," I said tightly.
"For you, Frederickson; not for me."
"I'm not dead yet," I said, and was sorry I'd spoken. It was false bravado, to say the least, and it sounded desperate and silly.
"You will be soon."
"Christ, you're a bunch of sickies!" I said with a lot more feeling than I'd intended to show. I knew that I had to stay calm and look for my best chance; but I vividly remembered what Daniel's body had looked like. Krowl, with his gun, and the gathering, robed assemblage outside the cubicle did tend to make me nervous. A rational part of me kept insisting that dead was dead, and it didn't make any difference how you died. But I didn't want to be tortured, cut, burned; I didn't want a dead animal stuffed in my mouth, or to be howled over by men in crimson robes. Their "spell" was working as it was supposed to: I was very much afraid, and my fear had a paralyzing effect. They were working my head over before they began on my body. I didn't really have much hope that Esobus or anyone else was going to save me. At least, I hoped to die with some dignity, which meant I'd have to try to mask my fear for as long as possible.
Krowl gestured with the barrel of his gun toward Watson's book of shadows. "You've been doing a lot of digging, and now you've read a genuine book of shadows. Have you finally satisfied your curiosity?"
Something in his voice-or perhaps the question itself-struck me as odd, and for a moment curiosity displaced fear. It suddenly occurred to me that there was something Krowl wanted from me. I certainly hoped so; from where I was sitting, I didn't look like a man with too much bargaining power.
Three more hooded, red-robed figures had joined the first man outside. That left five more to go-assuming Garth hadn't picked up Sandor Peth.
"I know you're all full of shit," I said, trying to keep my voice steady as I fought my mounting fear with words. "Your supercoven is shit. Men who are supposed to be the best ceremonial magicians in the country are brought together into one coven, and what do we get? People raised from the dead? Darkness at noon? Lead turned to gold? Nope. We get a bunch of nasty little boys dressed in Halloween costumes ripping off gullible people. It would be mildly funny if not for the fact that you're murderers. You're still all absolutely ridiculous, you know, and killing me won't change that."
That struck a nerve. Krowl's eyes flashed angrily, and the muscles in his jaw clenched and fluttered. "You miss the point, Frederickson," he said, his voice rising a notch.
I snorted. "They've been selling the Brooklyn Bridge to idiots like the people you've conned ever since we bought Manhattan from the Indians."
"We're committed to the accumulation of power through the conscious pursuit of evil," Krowl said in the tone of a slightly wounded professor correcting a dense student. "I won't even try to explain states of consciousness, or the inner journeys of the mind that we're able to achieve together."
"Spare me. I can take you on a tour of Bellevue and show you other people with altered states of consciousness." I paused, waited for my heartbeat to slow down; the longer we bantered, the longer I'd stay alive, and I was talking too fast. "Besides," I continued in a more measured tone, "the way I see it, you do all the work, Krowl. You've got a talent. Maybe it's just supersensitivity; whatever it is, I accept the fact that you gain tremendous insight into people, with your cards, in the wink of an eye. You can see their hopes and their secret terrors. But you're the one with the talent, and I suspect you're the single piece of flypaper that holds this wormy outfit together."
"Your analogy aside, I'm flattered," Krowl said. He obviously was.
"Don't be," I snapped. "I haven't finished. You know what I think? This alleged 'supercoven' of yours, with the possible exceptions of Smathers and a leader who won't even tell you his real name, is, in fact, the B group; you're second-raters." I paused, then asked softly, "What did you and Michael McEnroe fight about?"
Krowl stared at me for a long time, then slowly blinked once. "What do you know about McEnroe?" he asked tensely.
"I know he is-or was-your mentor. Your entire operation, including the hand casts, is patterned after his. I know McEnroe's very heavy, and that he taught you everything you know. My guess is that people like him and Daniel would have made up the A group; they were the first ones invited to form a coven. Smathers used the name of Esobus as bait to dangle in front of the real heavies. They may have laughed at him; more likely, they simply ignored him. So Smathers and Esobus had to widen the list. God, they really had to scrape the bottom of the cookie jar to come up with a madman like Sandor Peth. But they managed to bag you, Krowl. You certainly weren't Michael McEnroe, but you'd have to do. For the rest, Esobus and Smathers had to settle for more dumbies-like you-who'd be willing to accept a squawk box as a leader."
It was all speculation, a barrage of words fired in a wide scatter pattern, and I paused to try to gauge Krowl's reaction. I decided I must be pretty close to the target; the albino's mouth was slightly open, and his breathing had grown rapid and shallow.
"You're the conduit," I continued. "You're the key to this operation. People come to you for help and advice in your capacity as a palmist and tarot reader. With your talent, you can hit a moving vulnerability a mile away. Then you reel them in. Also, of course, there's the prestige the suckers feel from being in secret association with the great John Krowl-in a coven, no less; that's the clincher. You suck them in, then farm them out to other members of the coven-like advising Harley Davidson to leave Jake Stein at William Morris and sign Sandor Peth as his manager. Right up to the moment they die-or are milked dry-they continue to believe that they're members.
"I'm betting the rift between you and your teacher came when McEnroe found out what you were up to; he heard you'd been extended an invitation and were going to join. He also knew that, despite all your talent, you were evil and could be exploited. That's when he dumped on you." I paused, leaned slightly forward and smiled. "As far as I know, you only messed up with one man-but that was some screw-up."
"You don't know what you're talking about," Krowl said defensively.
"The hell I don't. Frank Marlowe had you turkeys in his sights from the beginning."
Krowl's eyes flashed. "The man you're referring to didn't survive long, did he?"
"You murdered him, but you didn't control him. You cast Bart Stone, big-shot Western writer, in the role of sucker, and all the time Frank Marlowe was playing Exorcist. He was planning to rip you off. I think that's funny as hell. Who knows? Before you killed him, Marlowe may even have found out who Esobus is."