“Oh yeah? Who died and made you hierophant?”
Suddenly she looked exhausted. Small lines showed at the sides of her mouth and eyes as she leaned to cup her hands above the hurricane lamp.
“Look, maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about,” she said wearily. “What I do know is, I read Dr. Kurtz’s book in high school, and it was like a bell went off in my head. All of a sudden all these things made sense—why they used to burn witches at the stake, why women aren’t allowed to be priests or rabbis, why Christmas is a big deal, but Halloween is just for little kids—all these things that had always just seemed to be the result of some weird random decision on somebody’s part.
“And Dr. Kurtz’s book explained all this stuff. Okay, so maybe a lot of it isn’t even true—but maybe it doesn’t all have to be true. Maybe just some of it is true, and maybe for me that’s enough. Because when I read her book, for the first time I felt like I understood things. Things that had to do with my father and the Benandanti, with everything I’d been brought up to believe in…
“And so I came here to the Divine, because my father went here, and I met you and Oliver and Annie, and Daddy’s old friend Balthazar Warnick, and Magda Kurtz—this woman I idolize!—and out of nowhere she gives me this—”
Her fingers clutched at the silver crescent hanging around her neck.
“—she gives me this, and then she’s gone. The paper says she was in a plane crash but I know she wasn’t and you know—and there has to be a reason, Sweeney. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have given it to me. There has to be a reason.”
I was quiet. Finally I said, “Sure there’s a reason, Angelica. Magda knew someone was going to kill her. She knew someone wanted that thing, and she was trying to get rid of it. And if you were smart, you’d get rid of it, too.
“No.” Angelica crossed her arms. “The only reason Warnick got to her at all was that she took it off. The lunula was protecting her. As long as she wore it, she was safe.
“And then she gave it to me…”
Her voice faded. When she spoke again it was in a whisper so soft I could barely hear her.
“That’s why I have to learn about it. If I was meant to have it, I have to know why. There are no accidents—that’s what my father says. Nothing ever happens without a reason.”
“Yeah, and when God closes a door, He opens a whole new can of worms. Well, you better be careful, that’s all,” I said darkly, and pointed at her throat. “I don’t know what that thing is, but it’s bad juju, I can tell you that.”
Suddenly the door to our room flew open. We both jumped; but it was only Annie.
“Hey, what’s this? You guys having a séance?” She flopped down beside Angelica and beamed. Her face was bright red and sweaty, and her hair stuck up in little tufts across her forehead. “Anyone I know?”
“Annie, have you been drinking?” Angelica raised her eyebrows in astonishment.
“Hell, no. I’ve been dancing, with Baby Joe and Hasel and those other guys. I just came back to get my sweater. You should come back with me. And listen: they’re having another party tomorrow night—”
She started throwing clothes out of her knapsack, finally held up a moth-eaten cardigan. “Eureka.”
“I think tomorrow’s supposed to be an evening of quiet contemplation, Annie,” said Angelica.
“Yeah, well, after vespers there’s gonna be some party over in Hasel’s room. I said you’d come, Angelica—oh, you too, Sweeney, don’t look at me like that!—they’ve got a boom box and a bunch of tapes, it’ll be great.”
“Sounds wonderful,” Angelica said doubtfully. “Is Oliver there now?”
“Oh, lighten up, di Rienzi! No, he’s not. I don’t know where he is—probably outside communing with Jupiter. Probably he’s on Jupiter.” Annie pulled on her sweater and whirled out the door again.
Angelica turned to me. “You can go if you want.”
“I don’t think so. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Are you tired?”
“Not really. I’m kind of buzzed, actually.”
“Would you like to take a walk? Outside, I mean.”
“Sure.”
We found a door that led out onto a rolling lawn. Beneath our feet the grass was brittle with frost and crackled noisily, like a match set to pine boughs. On the horizon, above the black tips of the trees, stars burned with a cold brilliance. There was no moon. We walked without speaking, and for once silence didn’t seem awkward to me. It was amazing how quickly we left the Orphic Lodge behind, neither light nor sound nor anything but the smell of woodsmoke hinting that it was there at all, sweet applewood and cedar, and an occasional flurry of red embers streaking the darkness overhead.
“I’m glad I met you, Sweeney,” Angelica said after a long while. The lawn had finally surrendered to tangled vetch and tall stalks of milkweed and yarrow. The night was utterly still; it was too late in the year for crickets, and even the night birds seemed to have fled. There was only wind rustling in dead weeds, and the crackling of leaves underfoot. “I don’t know, now, what I would have done if I hadn’t. I love Annie, but she’s different from you—you understand things about me, I don’t have to explain everything.”
I smiled ruefully and shook my head. I don’t understand anything! I wanted to yell, but didn’t.
“You really are my soul mate. You and Oliver.” Very tentatively her fingers brushed against the glimmer of light at her throat. Then she reached to take my hand. “Oh, Sweeney.”
I froze, my mouth suddenly dry as I waited for her to pull me closer. But she didn’t, only looked at me for a long moment with those uncanny green eyes. Finally she dropped my hand and continued down the hillside, picking her way carefully among weeds and brambles and stones.
In front of us the field dipped into a tiny hollow and rose again, ending in a grove of birches and sapling pines. In the moonless night the woods looked ominously black. Behind the timid growth of birches and young oaks, the evergreens formed a solid impenetrable wall, with thatched masses of dead ferns and leaves beneath.
“Maybe we should head on back now.” I was afraid that Angelica wanted to plunge on into those woods, and that as her soul mate I would be expected to follow. “I’m kind of cold.”
“Sure.” But abruptly she drew up short. “Sweeney!” she whispered. “There’s somebody there!”
I peered into the darkness, my heart pounding. I could just make out a pale figure sitting in a patch of dried milkweed. I took a few cautious steps forward, then laughed with relief.
“It’s Oliver!”
The night seemed to fall away. I turned giddily and grabbed Angelica. “Oliver!” I shouted.
“Oliver,” repeated Angelica.
He was all alone at the very edge of the field. He had a guitar in his lap and was holding it awkwardly yet lovingly, as though it were a baby. When he saw us, his mouth crooked into that odd canine grin. But he said nothing; only tipped his head so that his face was hidden.
“Oliver,” Angelica called again in a low voice. Her fingers closed about the lunula, so that its gleam was lost to me. Oliver did not raise his eyes. In the cold breeze his long hair rippled, as though some muscular impatient animal waited beneath. And then suddenly he looked up, not focusing on either of us but on some point far far away, between the ghostly shapes of the trees and the diamond-studded sky. In a thin clear plaintive voice—a boy’s voice, slightly off-key but so sweet and earnest it gave me goose bumps—he began to sing.