“Friend of yours?” asked Magda.
Angelica nodded, covering her mouth and then exploding into laughter. “I—I can’t believe it—”
“Very nice,” Magda remarked.
It was a clumsy effort at drag, but credible. Just a raw gash of lipstick and two streaks of rouge and some kind of bright blue eye shadow. But even this crude effort could not hide how good-looking he was—indeed, the makeup gave him an eerie, almost otherworldly, prettiness, as off-putting in its way as Angelica’s beauty. He walked with great dignity through the cheering students who gathered around him. No mincing or prancing, no sheepish grin. He looked like the biblical harlot from some early Cecil B. de Mille epic, and while a few of the older guests were scowling, most laughed, or at least pretended to.
“Who is he, Angelica? Do you—”
Magda abruptly shut up. The girl’s lips were parted, her eyes glowing. Whoever this boy was, Angelica was staring at him the way everyone had been gazing at her all evening. Magda touched the lunula at her throat and bit her lip.
Of course. This was the other one, the boy she’d glimpsed last night. Oliver, the naphaïm had named him; and now across the parquet floors snaked a conga line led by a half-dozen drunken boys in evening dress, yelping, “Ah—lee—VER! Ah—lee—VER!”
“He’s—very good-looking,” said Magda. But Angelica only smiled, a look of perfect seigniory, and continued to stare.
And that was when Magda saw the pattern, the secret behind the Sign. That beautiful boy, this beautiful prescient girl; all of Angelica’s pure fiery will turned onto nothing but him. The oldest story in the book, that was all it came down to. Nothing more.
Magda turned. As quickly as they had gathered to lionize him, Oliver’s admirers had fallen away. Now he stood by himself, holding the crumpled sheet to his chest in a surprisingly delicate manner. He was gazing abstractedly at the ceiling, where the Venetian glass chandelier swayed slightly. Oliver moved with it, arm raised. His eyes were closed and he was singing to himself. He appeared to be stoned out of his mind.
“…so I better go now. It was wonderful meeting you.”
With an apologetic smile, Angelica started to walk toward Oliver. Magda watched her go. From a hidden recess, the string quartet began to play an austere arrangement of “Pavane pour une enfant defunte.” In spite of herself Magda felt her eyes well with tears.
Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire.
Sudden fury lanced her. All of her hopes for the Sign, all the divided energies of the Benandanti and her Mistress—and they came down to this, some adolescent passion! She stared at Angelica and thought of all that golden energy, just waiting to be released in a dorm room with some horny zonked-out kid. It was insane! Almost without thinking, Magda darted forward and grabbed the girl by the shoulder.
“Angelica! Wait—”
Angelica stopped, taken aback.
“Angelica—I—I just wanted to—”
That was when Magda saw them: Balthazar Warnick and his young stooge Francis. Even from here she could see Warnick’s sapphire eyes glittering, his fixed smile as he nodded to a passing colleague. Then he turned, and his gaze locked with hers. In an instant she realized what her recklessness had cost her.
They knew.
Magda could tell by Balthazar’s eyes, and by something else: an abrupt though subtle shift in the air, as though a window had been opened to let a freezing wind vent through the smoke and laughter. The names of the two innocents were no longer a secret. The Benandanti had learned of her betrayal.
“Angelica! Wait—” Magda put every ounce of her will into the command. The girl gazed at her, puzzled. Around Magda’s neck the lunula burned like a heated coil.
“Tell—tell me your name again,” she ordered. Angelica frowned. “Please! Tell me your name.”
Angelica glanced over her shoulder, looking for the boy in the makeshift toga; but beneath the chandelier the floor was empty. She turned back to Magda. “Angelica di Rienzi.”
“Angelica—”
The lunula was a white-hot collar about Magda’s throat. She could scarcely breathe, scarcely find the energy to speak. The air buzzed with static electricity; she felt a burst of nausea as before her everything spun into a sudden tumultuous brilliance, jagged rays of white and crimson distorting her view: a terrifying prismatic radiance that did not illuminate but disturbed the outlines of everything about her. Light and color pulsed and throbbed and even seemed to produce a sound, an anguished shriek like a razor drawn across a whetstone. A few yards away, two shimmering forms moved through the luminous maelstorm.
“That’s right. Angelica di Rienzi,” the girl said softly.
Magda summoned all her strength. “Angelica di Rienzi.” She could hear Francis’s heavy tread. Quickly Magda reached for a stray curl upon the girl’s forehead, plucked a single bronze strand and snatched her hand back.
“Angelica Di Rienzi: In hoc signo vinces. Othiym, haïyo!” She opened her fingers: the hair flickered into a wisp of flame and white ash. “I would like you to have this, Angelica.”
With one smooth motion Magda pulled off the lunula. She held it in front of her and gazed upon it for the last time.
All the brilliance that had filled the room now seemed to radiate from the shimmering crescent, so that nothing but shadows surrounded herself and Angelica. From somewhere very far away she heard murmuring, a woman’s voice raised in lamentation. The shadows grew thicker. For an instant Magda had a glimpse of the new moon rising above a stony outcropping, the scarlet arc of George Wayford’s throat against the earth. Before the vision could fade she slid the lunula over Angelica’s head.
“I’m very glad you enjoyed the lecture,” Magda said loudly as Balthazar and Francis Connelly swept up behind her.
“What?” exclaimed Angelica; then “0w!—it’s hot!”
“But now you’d better go—”
Magda pushed the girl toward the bar. In a daze Angelica stumbled past Professor Warnick and his companion, then on through the diminishing crowd, her fingers splayed across her throat. For once no one took any notice of her.
“Magda.”
Magda could smell Balthazar before she turned to greet him: that deceptively serene mixture of Borkum Riff and chalk and moldering books. “Balthazar,” she whispered.
The small slender man shook his head. In his pearl grey morning suit and ascot of pale green satin, he looked like a darkly elegant cricket.
“I was so—surprised—to learn you were still among us. I thought your flight was today.” His tone was mocking but also wistful.
“I changed it.”
He took her right arm, Francis her left. “You changed a few other things as well,” Balthazar murmured as they assisted her through the crowd. “News of your recent fieldwork reached me only this morning. I had no idea your interests had—expanded—so far beyond ours.”
Gently but irresistibly they steered her toward the same door where Harold Mosreich’s nuns had gathered earlier. Magda looked away so they couldn’t see the fear in her eyes. Her throat and breast felt scorched. Without the lunula she felt utterly exposed, as in a nightmare of facing a lecture hall naked, her students gaping in disbelief. As Balthazar and Francis led her through the darkened doorway she whimpered.