“Let’s kill one of them,” the demon said.
Jenny and her grandparents sat on the ground, back to back.
“Once this ritual is over, I won’t have you talking like that,” Rachel said.
“Yes, mistress, I yearn for your guidance.”
Rachel paced the hill, making an effort not to look at her hostages. “What if Travis doesn’t come?”
“He’ll come,” Catch said.
“I think I hear a car.” Rachel watched the point where the road emerged from the woods. When nothing came, she said, “What if you’re wrong? What if he doesn’t come?”
“There he is,” Catch said.
Rachel turned to see Travis walking out of the woods and up the gentle slope toward them.
Robert screwed the tripod into the socket of the telephoto lens, tested its steadiness, then fitted the camera body on the back of the lens and turned it until it clicked into place. From the camera bag at his feet he took a pack of Polaroid film and snapped it into the bottom of the Nikon’s back.
“I’ve never seen a camera like that,” said Augustus Brine.
Robert was focusing the long lens. “The camera’s a regular thirty-five millimeter. I bought the Polaroid back for it to preview results in the studio. I never got around to using it.”
Howard Phillips stood poised with notebook in hand and a fountain pen at ready.
“Check the batteries in that recorder,” Robert said to Brine. “There are some fresh ones in my camera bag if you need them.”
Gian Hen Gian was craning his neck to see over the undergrowth into the clearing where Travis stood. “What is happening? I cannot see what is happening.”
“Nothing yet,” Brine said. “Are you set, Robert?”
“I’m ready,” Robert said without looking up from the camera. “I’m filling the frame with Rachel’s face. The parchment should be easily readable. Are you ready, Howard?”
“Short of the unlikely possibility that I may be stricken with writer’s cramp at the crucial moment, I am prepared.”
Brine snapped four penlight batteries into the recorder and tested the mechanism. “It’s up to Travis now,” he said.
Travis topped halfway up the hill. “Okay, I’m here. Let them go and I’ll translate the invocation for you.”
“I don’t think so,” Rachel said. “Once the ritual has been performed and I’m sure it has worked, then you can all go free.”
“You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Catch will kill us all.”
“I don’t believe you. The Earth spirit will be in my control, and I won’t allow it.”
Travis laughed sarcastically. “You haven’t even seen him, have you? What do you think you have there, the Easter Bunny? He kills people. That’s the reason he’s here.”
“I still don’t believe you.” Rachel was beginning to lose her resolve.
Travis watched Catch move to where the hostages were tied. “Come, do it now, Travis, or the old woman dies.” He raised a clawed hand over Amanda’s head.
Travis trudged up the hill and stood in front of Rachel. Very quietly her said to her, “You know, you deserve what you are going to get. I never thought I could wish Catch on anyone, but you deserve it.” He looked at Jenny, and her eyes pleaded for an explanation. He looked away. “Give me the invocation,” he said to Rachel. “I hope you brought a pencil and paper. I can’t do this from memory.”
Rachel reached into an airline bag that she had brought and pulled out the candlesticks. One at a time she unscrewed them and removed the invocations, then replaced the pieces in the airline bag. She handed Travis the parchments.
“Put the candlesticks over by Jenny,” he said.
“Why?” Rachel asked.
“Because the ritual won’t work if they are too close to the parchments. In fact, you’d be better off if you untied them and sent them away with the candlesticks. Get them out of the area altogether.” The lie seemed so obvious that Travis feared he had ruined everything by putting too much importance on the candlesticks.
Rachel stared at him, trying to make sense of it. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“Neither do I,” Travis said. “But this is mystical stuff. You can’t tell me that taking hostages so you can call up a demon is consistent with the logical world.”
“Earth spirit! Not demon. And I will use this power for good.”
Travis considered trying to convince her of her folly, then decided against it. The lives of Jenny and the Elliotts depended on Catch maintaining his charade as a benevolent Earth spirit until it was too late. He glared at the demon, who grinned back.
“Well?” Travis said.
Rachel picked up the airline bag and took it to a spot a few feet down the hill from the hostages.
“No. Farther away,” Travis said.
She slung the bag over her shoulder and took it another twenty yards down the hill, then turned to Travis for approval.
“What is this about?” Catch asked.
Travis, afraid to push his luck, nodded to Rachel and she set the bag down. Now the candlesticks were twenty yards closer to the road that ran around the back of the hill — the road that Augustus Brine would drive when the shit hit the fan.
Rachel returned to the hilltop.
“I’ll need that pencil and paper now,” he said.
“It’s in the bag.” Rachel went back toward the bag.
While she was retrieving the pencil and paper from the airline bag, Travis held the parchments out before him, one at a time, counting to six before he put the first one down and picked up the next. He hoped he had the angle to Robert’s camera right and that his body was not in the way of the lens.
“Here.” Rachel handed him a pencil and a steno pad.
Travis sat down cross-legged with the parchments out in front of him. “Sit down and relax, this is going to take some time.”
He started on the parchment from the second candlestick, hoping to buy some time. He translated the Greek letter by letter, searching his memory first for each letter, then for the meaning of the words. By the time he finished the first line, he had fallen into a rhythm and had to make an effort to slow down.
“Read what he has written,” Catch said.
“But he’s just done one line-” Rachel said.
“Read it.”
Rachel took the steno pad from Travis and read, “Being in possession of the Power of Solomon I call upon the race that walked before man…” She stopped. “That’s all there is.”
“It’s the wrong paper,” Catch said. “Travis, translate the other one. If it’s not right this time, the girl dies.”
“That’s the last time I buy you a Cookie Monster comic book, you scaly fucker.”
Reluctantly Travis shuffled the parchments and began to translate the invocation he had spoken in Saint Anthony’s chapel seventy years before.
Howard Phillips had two Polaroid prints out on the ground before him. He was writing a translation out on a notepad while Augustus Brine and Gian Hen Gian looked over his shoulder. Robert was looking through the camera.
“They’ve made him change parchments. He must have been translating the wrong one.”
Brine said, “Howard, are you translating the one we need?”
“I am not sure yet. I’ve only translated a few lines of the Greek. This Latin passage at the top appears to be a message rather than an invocation.”
“Can’t you just scan it? We don’t have time for mistakes.”
Howard read what he had written. “No, this is wrong.” He tore the sheet from the notepad and began again, concentrating on the other Polaroid. “This one seems to have two shorter invocations. The first one seems to be the one that empowers the Djinn. It talks about a race that walked before man.”