Newscasters all over the primary television channels reported on the ‘vast collection’ of jewels stolen from the vaults of the baron, how the safe from which the Celeste was stolen was but one of four, all emptied of precious stones and diamonds overflowing in the home of the nobleman. Naturally, the fact that this was all untrue was unbeknownst to all but the Baron Henri de Martine, who used his wife’s death and the still unsolved robbery to claim an exuberant sum from insurance companies and collect his wife’s policy payout. No charges were laid against the baron, as he’d an airtight alibi at the time of Madame Chantal’s demise, which granted him a fortune in inheritance money. The latter was the sum that would pull him out of debt. So, in effect, Madame Chantal did incontrovertibly help her husband out of bankruptcy after all.
It was all a sweet irony the baron would never comprehend. Still, after the shock and horror of the incident, he wondered about the circumstances surrounding the incident. He did not know that his wife had removed the Celeste and the other two less significant stones from his safe, and he wracked his brain trying to make sense of her unusual death. She’d been by no means suicidal, and if she were even remotely inclined that way, Chantal would never have set herself alight, of all things!
Only when he found Louise, Chantal’s assistant, with her tongue cut out and blinded, did he realize that his wife’s death was not a suicide. The police concurred, yet they did not know where to begin investigating such a heinous murder. Louise had since been admitted to a psychiatric ward at the Paris Psychological Institute where she would be kept for examination, but doctors who’d met with her were all convinced that she had lost her mind, that she was perhaps responsible for the murders and her own subsequent maiming.
It made headlines all over Europe and some smaller stations in other parts of the world also featured the bizarre incident. All the while, the baron refused any interviews, citing his traumatic experience as reason for taking time away from the public eye.
The neighbors finally found the chilly night air too much for their comfort and they retreated into their apartment. All that remained was the sound of the river trickling to the occasional distant dog barking. Now and then, a vehicle would come down the narrow street on the other side of the complex, whooshing by before leaving silence in its wake.
Abdul woke suddenly, with a clear mind. It was not a start, but it was an instant urge to wake that shot his eyes open. He waited and listened, but there was nothing that could have woken him, apart from a sort of sixth sense. Nude and gaunt, the Egyptian con man walked to his bedroom window. With one look at the starry sky, he knew why he’d been prompted to leave his slumber.
“Another one falling,” he murmured as his keen eyes followed the rapid descent of a falling star, mentally marking the approximate position of the stars around it. Abdul smiled. “Only a few more to go and the world will fall to all your desires. They will be crying out and begging to die.”
He turned away from the window as soon as the white streak had dissolved in the distance. In the dusk of his bedroom, he wandered toward an old, wooden trunk he took everywhere with him, embraced by two substantial leather belts that met at the front. Only a small porch light, off center from the shutter above his window, provided light into his room. It illuminated his lean shape, with the light on his bare skin emphasizing his sinewy musculature. Raya resembled some contortionist from a circus sideshow, a dark version of an acrobat that did not care for entertaining anyone but himself, but rather utilizing his talent to force others into entertaining him.
The room was much like him — basic, barren, and functional. There was a basin and a bed, a wardrobe and a desk with a chair and lamp. That was it. Everything else was just there temporarily for him to keep track of the stars over the Belgian and French skies until he had acquired the diamonds he was after. Lining the four walls of his room were countless charts of constellations from all corners of the globe, all marked up with connecting lines, crossing at certain ley lines, while others were marked in red for their unknown behavior due to missing charts. Some of the large, pinned maps had bloodstains on them, rusty brown spots silently accounting the manner in which they’d been procured. Others were newer, having been printed out only years ago, contrasting starkly with those discovered centuries ago.
It was almost time to wreak havoc in the Middle East and he relished the thought of where he had to wander next: to the kind of people that were far easier to beguile than the dumb, greedy westerners in Europe. In the Middle East, Abdul knew people would be more susceptible to his trickery, due to their wonderful traditions and superstitious beliefs. He could so easily drive them insane or make them kill one another down there in the desert, where King Solomon once walked. He would save Jerusalem for last, only because the order of falling stars made it so.
Raya opened the chest and fumbled for the scrolls he was looking for among the fabric and gilded belts. The dark brown, oily-looking piece of parchment right against the wall of the box was the one he sought. With an ecstatic look, he unrolled it and set it down on the desk, using two books at each end to secure it. Then, from the same chest, he retrieved an athame. Curving with ancient precision, the snaking blade gleamed in the dim light as he pressed its sharp end down on his left palm. Effortlessly its point fell into his skin from the mere force of gravity. He need not even push it.
Blood formed around the small point of the knife and formed a perfect pearl of crimson that grew slowly until he removed the knife. With his blood he marked the position of the star that had just fallen. While doing so the dark parchment eerily shuddered slightly. It satisfied Abdul, pleasing him to no end to see the reaction of the charmed artifact, the Corpus Codex Sol Amun which he’d found as a young man while herding goats in the arid shadows of nameless Egyptian hills.
Once his blood had been absorbed into the star chart on the bewitched scroll, Abdul rolled it up carefully and tied a knot in the sinew that held the scroll. The star had finally fallen. Now it was time to leave France. Now that he had the Celeste he could move on to more important places where he could work his magic and watch the world fall, undone by the guidance of King Solomon’s diamonds.
12
Enter Dr. Nina Gould
“You have been acting strange, Sam. I mean, stranger than your darling innate weirdness,” Nina remarked after she’d poured them some red wine. Bruich, still remembering the petite lady babysitting him during Sam’s last absence from Edinburgh, made himself at home in her lap. Automatically, Nina started petting him as if this were the natural course of events.
She’d arrived at the Edinburgh Airport an hour previous, where Sam had picked her up in the pouring rain and as discussed, brought her back to his townhouse in Dean Village.
“I’m just tired, Nina.” He shrugged as he took the glass from her and raised it in a toast. “May we avoid getting the shackles and may we keep our arses pointing south for many years to come!”
Nina burst out laughing, even though she understood the prevailing wish inside the comical toast. “Aye!” she cried and clinked her glass against his, shaking her head in amusement. She looked around Sam’s bachelor pad. The walls were empty, save for a few pictures of Sam with once prominent politicians and some high society celebrities, interspersed with some photos of him with Nina and Purdue, and of course, Bruich. She thought to put to rest a question she’d been keeping for a long while.