“Do you want me to help you with your dog?”
“Oh, dear God. Rocky!” Sobbing, she turned and knelt beside the carcass again. “Oh, Wocky-wocks. I didn’t forget about you. Honest, I didn’t.”
“Very sad,” Rasalom said. “Has he been sickly?”
“No!” she wailed. “The vet said he was in great shape.”
“Well, I suppose it was God’s will then.”
“No, not God’s will! It can’t be.”
Rasalom shrugged. “Don’t they say, ‘The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away’?”
“No!” Her voice rose. “God is a giver of life, not a taker. Satan is a destroyer of life. This wasn’t God’s work, this was Satan’s!” She pounded a fist on the floor. “Satan-Satan-Satan!”
Anger mixed with the grief. Even better. He supped.
Rasalom hid a smile. The Judeo-Christian myths personifying what the cattle perceived as “evil” were no closer to the truth than the rest of the world’s religions. He knew the true wellspring of those myths.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes! Satan did this!”
And so, in a way, she was right.
6
The sun was low over the bare, snow-covered cornfields and orchards by the time they reached Johnson.
“At least Burlington County hasn’t been paved over yet,” Eddie said.
He’d called shotgun-for old times’ sake-and Jack drove. Weezy had been perfectly happy to have the backseat to herself and the Compendium.
Eddie was exaggerating-plenty of green left, especially with the Pine Barrens sprawling to the east-but Jack got the point. An awful lot of strip malls lining these once pristine country roads.
“Take it slow on Quakerton Road,” Eddie said.
“You mean Q’qr Town?” Weezy said.
“What?”
Jack smiled. “Long story.”
Too long to tell.
“Anyway,” Eddie said, “I want to see what’s changed.”
So Jack did just that. Why not? They weren’t in any big hurry. They’d see what was what at the Lodge and then find a place to spend the night. First thing tomorrow they’d get started on finding that sigil. If it was still to be found.
They crossed the bridge over Quaker Lake-or was that Q’qr Lake?-into Old Town and turned toward the two-story stucco box of the Lodge. Jack was surprised to see a pair of pickup trucks parked in front.
Weezy leaned forward over the back of the front seat and thrust her head between them.
“What’s up? Remodeling, y’think?”
Not good, Jack thought as he parked next to the pickups. He didn’t want company.
As the three of them walked through the snow toward the front door, Jack noticed how the place had gone to seed a little. Not quite rundown, but not as pristine as he remembered. The stucco showed small cracks here and there, the paint needed freshening, the grass was trimmed but the foundation plantings needed weeding.
As ever, the Order’s sigil hung over the pillared front entrance.
Jack noticed something new that hadn’t been apparent from a distance.
“Check out the second-floor windows.”
Weezy looked up and frowned. “Only the first floor used to be barred. Now the second?”
Eddie said, “Why would they do that?”
Jack couldn’t tell if he was being facetious or not.
“Because they were broken into?”
Weezy smiled. “Could be… could be.”
The trucks bothered Jack. Except for sporadic gatherings of the regional members, the Lodge typically remained vacant, often for weeks at a stretch. The only time in memory that anyone had lived there was when the white-suited Ernst Drexler and his assistant-whose name eluded Jack now-had moved in during a crisis involving the deaths of a number of the Order’s local members… deaths precipitated by something Jack and Weezy had dug from a mound in the Pines.
Jack had been counting on that emptiness, because they were going to need time-maybe lots of it-alone in the building if they were to find the sigil.
He knocked and turned to Weezy as they waited.
“Remember the first time we knocked on this door?”
She nodded. “We were looking for help for that lost guy we found in the Pines.”
That was the day he first met Ernst Drexler. He’d been fourteen and Drexler an adult. The dynamics of their first meeting had been dramatically different from their last.
No answer, so he knocked again. Still no response so he turned to Eddie.
“What’s the secret password?”
Eddie blinked. “What?”
“That opens the door. You’re a member of the Order. We expect you to know these things. Right, Weez?”
“Absolutely.” She grinned and nudged her brother. “‘Open, Septimus,’ or something like that, right?”
Eddie wasn’t smiling as he shook his head. “What an idiot I was… a few weeks ago that might have been funny. But now… now I realize how little I knew about them.”
“Well, at least your eyes were opened,” Weezy said.
Jack nudged him. “And you still have your skin.”
“But little else.”
He felt bad for Eddie.
“Let’s try the back.”
As they walked around the side, Jack peeked through the bars on the first-floor windows and saw lights on. They turned the corner in time to see a man in dirt-smeared work clothes exiting the rear door lugging a jackhammer.
Jackhammer?
“Tearing the place down?” Jack said.
The guy seemed surprised to see them. “I’m pissed enough to do just that. You with AFSO?”
“AFSO?”
“Ancient Fraternal Septimus Order,” Eddie muttered.
Oh, right.
“You mean the Order? I’ve done some work for them.”
True enough-he’d been the groundskeeper here.
“You get paid?”
Jack nodded. “On time, to the dime. I get the feeling you’ve got a different story.”
The guy gave Jack a narrow look. “What’s it to you?”
“Maybe we can help.”
The man shrugged and rested the jackhammer on the ground. “All right. This guy from the Order hired me to put together a crew and excavate a section of the basement.”
“Excavate?”
“Yeah. Break through the floor and start digging.”
“For China?”
“No, just until we found something.”
“Like what?”
“He called it an ‘artifact.’”
Weezy stepped closer, eyes narrowed. “What did he say it looked like?”
“Didn’t. Said we’d know it when we saw it.”
Jack said, “And what were you supposed to do when you found it?”
“Stop digging and call Kris.”
Kris? Jack had heard Szeto’s bully boys call him Kristof. And in the last hour of his life Szeto himself had mentioned a “special project.”
The One comes to me now. In fact, he has engaged me for special project in your hometown. Isn’t that interesting?
Yeah. Very interesting. This had to be it. But just to be sure…
“Black hair, likes leather, perpetual five-o’clock shadow?”
The guy’s eyebrows rose. “You got it. You know the SOB? Where’s he hiding?”
Another guy in work clothes came out the back door with a number of shovels over his shoulder. He gave them a sullen look, then nudged the other worker.
“You comin’, Tommy?”
“Yeah. On my way.”
Had to keep this guy talking.
“Kris…” Jack said, looking thoughtful as the second guy walked away. “Not sure at the moment. Haven’t seen him since sometime last week. But I might be able to find out. Sounds like you have a problem with him.”
“Yeah. Like getting paid. He gave me an advance and I hired the crew and we got started. But the second payment is way late and he ain’t returning my calls.”
And he never will, Jack thought.
“So you’re calling it quits?”
“Till we get paid, yeah. If I don’t get paid, I can’t pay my crew. And we’re not working for free.”
Jack said, “I’ll check around. If I see him, I’ll tell him to give you a call.”
The guy picked up his jackhammer. “Yeah, you do that. Meanwhile, I’m somewhere else.”
“Well, good luck.” Jack stepped toward the door. “I’m gonna take a look at what you’ve done.”