Her smile crumbled as her throat worked and she blinked back sudden tears.
Weezy’s heart went out to her. This poor kid had been through more heartache in the past year than many people see in a lifetime.
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay. If I hadn’t gotten involved with that… that monster, I’d be a college freshman instead of an unwed mother, and my own mother would still be alive.” She shook her head. “She used to fine me every time I said ‘totally’ and ‘like.’”
Weezy fought an urge to hug her. Dawn was too brittle right now. No telling how she’d react.
Aw, hell with it, she thought and slipped her arms around her.
“I’m so sorry. I wish I could say something to make you feel better.”
Dawn hesitated, then, with a soft sob, returned the hug. She clung to Weezy a moment, then eased away.
“Just having you to talk to keeps me sane.”
“You worry about staying sane?”
“Not really. Well, maybe. The baby’s all I can think about. Sometimes I wish I could turn it off, but it won’t stop.”
Weezy knew how that was. She’d been diagnosed as manic-depressive as a teen-they called it bipolar now. She didn’t know if the diagnosis was accurate, but she’d been medicated and it had helped… some. She still hadn’t been able to turn off the thoughts, but she’d been able to slow them. Having a memory that wouldn’t allow her to forget anything, ever, was no help either.
Dawn wasn’t bipolar, though, just post-partum and obsessed.
“Want to come in for some coffee?”
Dawn shook her head as she turned toward her apartment door. “I know you need to go back to reading your bizarro book, and I need to crash. Haven’t been sleeping much and I need to catch up if I’m going to be fresh tomorrow.”
“What’s tomorrow?”
Dawn pushed open her door and stepped inside. “Back to the McCready building.”
“But you’re, as you say, persona non grata.”
Her smile was grim. “They can keep me out of the building but they can’t keep me from watching it. Thanks for being a friend.”
She closed the door, leaving Weezy alone in the hall, wondering how long Dawn could keep going like this.
In her own apartment, Weezy headed directly for the kitchenette and her coffeemaker. She’d invested in a Keurig personal brewer-named it Katy, of course-and immediately it had become her favorite appliance. Pots of coffee went stale after a while. Her beloved Katy was always ready to brew a fresh cup for her.
She unlocked the kitchen cabinet where she hid the Compendium of Srem, the “bizarro book” Dawn had mentioned. Almost as old as Glaeken and Rasalom, and virtually indestructible, Torquemada had tried to destroy it during the Spanish Inquisition but couldn’t, so he buried it and built a monastery over it. It wouldn’t stay buried, however, and after a torturous journey through many hands-Hank Thompson’s and Jack’s among them-it wound up here in Weezy’s apartment.
She laid it on the kitchen table and opened it to the leather marker she had left against the last page she’d read. As usual it did not open to that page. The book had this maddening, frustrating tendency to change pages on its own. Nobody knew the exact number of pages in the Compendium -the book was designed to have a finite number of sheets but a virtually infinite number of pages. But something had gone wrong and all the pages were out of order. What you found when you turned the page rarely had anything to do with the page before. And when you turned back, the original page might have changed as well.
She flipped to a random page, just to see what she’d find. When she saw the header, she caught her breath. The Other Name… she’d seen that mentioned in the past but had never encountered a whole page devoted to it. Glaeken had mentioned something about each of the Seven who championed the Otherness back in the First Age having a secret name. This could be it. But the text that followed caused her to slam on the brakes.
It wasn’t in English.
One of the many miraculous things about the Compendium -and what Torquemada must have considered the most Satanic-was its ability to present its text in the reader’s native tongue. Someone born and raised in Riyadh would see Arabic; from the Congo, Swahili; from Johnson, NJ, English.
Yet this was in some mishmash of symbols and characters that Weezy had never seen. She had a feeling this was important-so important that she couldn’t risk losing the page. She pulled out her cell phone and began snapping photos. As expected, what she saw as English reverted to the Old Tongue in the photos, but the gibberish remained the same.
She couldn’t wait to show Glaeken.
10
The dashboard clock in the Crown Vic read a little after eleven P.M. as Jack exited the Garden State Parkway and began to wind his way along rural back roads in northern Ocean County. The twisting pavement led him along hilly curves until the road crested. He knew what was coming up on his left: an opening through the trees with a concrete skirt abutting the road’s asphalt. The skirt seemed to end at a cliff, but Jack knew better. He turned onto it and descended a steep concrete driveway into a former sandpit, a huge excavation maybe seventy or eighty feet deep, with a hodgepodge of buildings backed up against the near wall.
All the buildings were dark. He passed a small fleet of cement-mixer trucks and haulers of various shapes and sizes, all lined up and facing front like grunts awaiting inspection. No moving van in sight.
He pulled up to the office door of the biggest, tallest building. A sign above it showed a stylized black sun that looked like a sunflower, and the words Wm. Blagden amp; Sons, Inc.
Yep. They still ran the place.
He got out and banged on the door, shouting, “Anybody there?” a couple of times.
If anyone answered, he’d ask for directions.
No one did. He flashed his penlight on the lock. A Schlage. Good.
He parked the Vic behind the mixers. Its black color blended nicely into the shadows. He pulled out his Schlage bump key set and returned to the door. Found one that fit the lock, tapped it with the butt of his Glock, and he was in. The place hadn’t been alarmed on his last trip and didn’t appear to be now. After all, what was there to steal? Sand? Loose cement mix?
Jack flashed his light around the office. Pretty bare bones: a couple of desks, chairs, computer monitors, filing cabinets. His plan was to find a work order for the date Osala was moved and maybe a delivery address to go along with it. A picture window looked out onto the big building’s wide, open floor. Jack aimed his flash through and the beam picked up…
A truck.
He stepped out onto the floor and played his beam over it as he approached. A box truck with the Blagden logo on the side. Jack froze as the light picked up something else beyond it. Something big and long and metallic.
Forcing himself back into motion, he passed the truck and stopped before a large metal tube, maybe twenty feet long and five in diameter, its flanks embossed with odd symbols. Jack knew it well. A year and a half ago he’d come here looking for someone. He’d peeped through the window as this cylinder-standing upright then-had been filled with concrete, unaware that the person he’d come to find was bound inside, and had drowned in the wet mix while Jack watched.
A wave of sadness rippled through him as he returned to the truck. He grabbed the handles on the rear door and heaved. As it rolled up, he flashed his light into the truck’s bay, revealing stacks of gleaming furniture protected by thick mover’s pads.
He stepped back and checked the license plate. It matched the numbers Mack had given him.
So… weeks after loading, Osala’s-Rasalom’s-furniture still hadn’t been delivered.
He hopped into the truck’s cab-it stank of cigarettes-and hunted for papers. None on the seat. In the glove compartment he found maps, matches, and a work order that matched Mack’s copy, but no delivery address. Instead, someone had scrawled Hold until further notice across the bottom.