Dragon's Met
Part Nine
by peregrin anna
c. 2001


(Disclaimers and notes may be found on the introductory page .)





Chapter 60

Prisons, dungeons, blessed places where evil is impossible
because they are crossroads of all the evil in the world.  One
cannot commit evil in hell.
          ~ Jean Genet


Gary didn't stop pounding until he could no longer feel his hands; didn't stop yelling until his voice gave out.  Both happened long before his anger had been spent.  Cursing his own ineffectual efforts, he flopped down, leaned his head back against the door, and rested his arms over his bent knees, his numb hands dangling limply.  The only consolation he could find was that Morgelyn was still alive--or had been.  What must have happened to make her scream like that?  He shut his eyes, but couldn't shut off his imagination.  It would have made him nauseous, had there been anything in his stomach.

His fingers started to tingle as feeling returned, and he welcomed the pain--it gave him something to focus on.  Flexing life back into them , letting the sharp needle stabs run across his palms, he stared out the window and tried to decide what time it was, but he couldn't be sure, only that there was still light outside and there were birds chirping madly over the moor.  Wish as Gary might, Fergus didn't appear.  

Every muscle in his body protested as Gary got to his feet, checking the little window in the door for any sign of movement or life before he started down the stairs.  Nothing--there was nothing.  Maybe they would just forget about him down here and leave him to the rats.  How could he help Morgelyn--how could he help anyone at all--if that happened?

He moved to the window, standing on tiptoe to look for any sign of help, but there were only grass and sky.  "Fergus!" he croaked with the little bit of voice he had left.  "Hey, Fergus, you out there?  Anyone?  Cat?"  

There was no response.  Gary turned away from the window, slumping against the wall and massaging his throat.  He was so wrapped up in worry that he didn't hear the footsteps until they were right outside the door.

"Get in there, wench."

Pushing off from the wall, Gary made it to the stairs as the door banged open.  Pushed from behind, Morgelyn came flying through the opening and down the steps.  Gary caught her around the waist, and they tumbled down the last three steps together.

The door slammed shut with a tomblike echo.  Gary heard the bolts fall again, but those sounds were only part of the background, not nearly as loud in his ears as Morgelyn's short, shaky breaths.  Grasping her elbows, he tried to help her up, but even as she whispered, "Thank you," she was twisting out of his hands, turning her back to him, bent over with her arms cradled against her body.

"You're hurt."  Gary's voice, sandpaper rough, was forced out through his clenched jaw.  He took a step closer but she moved away, into the shadows in the far corner.  "Morgelyn, are you all right?"

"Yes, of course."  The sound of her voice was anything but all right; it was higher, tenser than he'd ever heard it.  She was trying to do...something, tugging at her dress with her right hand, Gary couldn't tell what.  He stepped to the side, trying to at least see her profile.

"I heard you scream."  

She closed her eyes and gave up whatever she was doing to her dress, wincing, leaning her forehead against the wall.  "Gary..."

Gary swallowed back impatience and his own fear.  Given what he'd been imagining, he should have been thrilled just to see her alive, but something was wrong, very wrong.  He managed to keep his voice soft, as if he were coaxing a wounded animal out of hiding.  "What did they do to you?"  She shook her head, eyes still shut.  He stepped around so he was in front of her, and he could see that her right hand was clutching the top of her dress closed.  The laces trailed out between her fingers, and her left hand was pressed tight into her stomach.  All frustration fled, replaced by a queasy sense that he might not want to know the answer to his question.  "What is it?"

She cleared her throat, huddled further into the wall as if it could swallow her, hide her.  When she spoke, her voice was hushed, the words floating away like falling leaves, almost out of reach before Gary could make sense of them.  "It was what they wanted, what he--what Banning wanted."  She still wouldn't look at Gary, staring instead at the dark corner behind him.  "Screaming was--it was the least of what they wanted, but it was enough to make them stop.  For now."  
 
"What are you talking about, what else did they want?"  

She shook her head fiercely, but this time she didn't flinch away when Gary placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him.  Even in the dim light of the cell, he could see that not only her hair and clothing were in disarray.  Emotionally she was just on the edge of falling apart, an expression of hopeless fear and the hint of tears transforming a face he thought he'd known.  "Morgelyn, what did they want?"

"What do you think they wanted?" she whispered, her eyes still focused somewhere over his shoulder.  "They wanted me to sign that confession, and they--"  She looked up at him, finally, brown eyes huge and dark.  "They wanted me to say that you were--that you have committed the same sins."

Gary's jaw worked for a moment.  "You should have, if it would have stopped them.  I'll tell them myself--"

"No!"  Morgelyn pulled away from him, and he let go immediately, not wanting to trap her like...like Banning had.  What had happened in that room?  "No, Gary, you do not understand."  Backing past him and into the corner, she turned away and struggled with the laces of her dress, trying to pull them closed, but only using her right hand--the left was still held protectively against her stomach.  Whatever she was trying to accomplish, it wasn't working, and her soft, frustrated sniffles were too much for Gary.  He was only one long stride away from being able to reach out and touch her hand.

"Let me--" he started to say, but she jumped back when his fingers brushed her own, clutching the loosely-laced halves of her bodice together.  Gary struggled to keep his voice level and calm.  "Morgelyn, it's me.  Look at me--I'm not gonna hurt you, I promise, I'm your friend.  I'm not them."  He tried to meet her terrified eyes in the semi-darkness, hoping for some sign that he was getting through.  "I swear, I'd never do anything to hurt you.  I'm on your side, okay?  I want to help."

She bit her lower lip, but her hand fell to her side when he took the ends of the laces.  Gary was careful not to look too closely at the skin exposed under his hands, to look at his friend's face instead, but mostly what he saw was the top of her bowed head.  He tried to pull the lacing up tight, tried not think about the fact that the top of the dress bodice, usually laced up so that not even the chemise she wore beneath it showed through, had been spread wide enough to...to allow a man's hand...

...or that Morgelyn's skin was gooseflesh from her hairline down to where, despite his best efforts, his fingers clumsily brushed against her throat when he tied the laces into a knot like a sneaker's.  And then he felt something else: smooth, small, irregular patches of something harder than skin, scattered among the goosebumps at her neck.  "What's this?"

Morgelyn's right hand, her good hand, Gary thought with a sick twist of his stomach, knocked against his fingers as she brought her hand up to cover her mouth.  Frozen, still clutching the laces, he waited.  "'Tis--'tis candle wax," she whispered between her fingers, eyes closed again.

"I don't--what--"  Gary was no longer sure that he had the right to ask her to relive this.  He dropped his hands to his sides, then brought one up, barely brushing her left shoulder, just to let her know--what, that he was there?  That he was sorry he'd failed her?  Too little, too late, mocked a voice in his head.  "Morgelyn, I'm sorry--I don't understand."

She brought her hand down, tracing the bow he'd tied, then dropped it to her side in a hopeless gesture.  "He likes what he does."  

The whisper was so soft that Gary almost couldn't make it out.  It took another beat for him to understand what it meant.  One shudder turned into uncontrollable shivering under his hand, and Morgelyn kept her head bowed.  "He said--he said he was looking for witch marks, he said he had to touch my--my neck and my--to see if I had been marked by a d-devil's kiss.  And then he said that my--my skin was too d-dark to see, and he needed the candle close.  Father--Father Malcolm--his hand kept shaking, and he spilled the wax, and Banning li-liked it when I jumped, when it hurt me, when he t-touched--"  Her hand flew up again, covering her eyes for a moment, then moved down to her mouth as she tipped her head to look up at Gary, shaking her head back and forth, back and forth.  "He wouldn't stop."

Compared to some of the more horrific scenarios he'd been imagining a few minutes before, this might not have seemed so bad--but Morgelyn's eyes were tear-filled, and it had obviously been more than she could handle.  "You're okay now," Gary whispered, rubbing her shoulder.  It could possibly qualify as the stupidest thing he'd ever said, in any century, but the truth was he didn't know what to say.  He was hopeless, useless.  Behind her hand, Morgelyn made a soft, choking noise, and he figured she would have agreed with his assessment.  "What--what happened there?"  Gary pointed two fingers at the arm she still held cradled against herself.  He could imagine the struggle if Morgelyn had put up a fight when..."Is it broken?"

Biting her lip again, Morgelyn shook her head and moved into the patch of wan sunlight.  Gary saw her shoulders stiffen as she turned to face him, blinking furiously.  She pulled her arm away from her body slowly and held out her left hand, palm up.  Stepping closer, Gary peered at it in the slatted light that filtered through the window bars.  This time there was no stopping the anger that flooded through him, heating the blood in his veins.  He raised his eyes to meet Morgelyn's.  Those sadistic, cruel bastards--in that moment, he would have gladly taken them all on at once.

"He--he held it over--no, in, in the candle, that--the flame."  Morgelyn sucked in air between her teeth, fingers curling toward the palm in a rictus of pain.  "He would not let his own hand get near the flame; he used those, those pinchers..."  When Gary, dumbfounded, would have taken the blistered hand in his own, she pulled it away, her expression apologetic.  "I cannot--it hurts--if I only had some witch hazel, or willow bark--or maybe even plantain, that would do in a pinch--"

"Why?"  Gary's question was forced out through a clenched jaw.  

"They are good for burns, they stop the pain, and--"

"Morgelyn."  He grabbed her by the shoulders, searching her eyes for the answer she was avoiding so assiduously.  "Why--why in the world--how could anyone do this?"  He didn't just mean her hand, he meant all of it.  How could they have seen what this was doing to her, how could they look at her face and see the same shock, the same stark fear, that he saw, and continue to hurt her?  How could they enjoy inflicting this on anyone?

Morgelyn blinked at him again, and he realized it was her way of shifting gears, leaving the safer haven of dithering over herbs she couldn't get anyway to enter fresh, painful memory.  Again, it crossed his mind that he shouldn't be asking, but he had to know, he wanted to understand what had happened to her.  
"Oh, Gary--"  Her voice dropped back down to a whisper.  "The things he said--they both said--about me, about you--"  She swallowed hard, glanced down at her upturned palm.  "Right before he did this, Banning said I needed to understand what was being put before me; that this was only temporary, but the torments of hell would be forever.  And if I did not confess and tell the truth--what they say is the truth--that--"  She swallowed, the tears springing back into her eyes, and this time they spilled over.  "This was how we will both die, and how our souls will spend eternity.  He said this was the only way to make me understand the truth of what I was, and what I had done.  Then I--I screamed."  Something in her seemed to give way--her shoulders sagged, her knees bent, and she would have crumpled down to the floor if Gary hadn't caught her by the elbows.  She had nothing left, he realized; nothing left to fight with.  She'd used up the last of her reserves in reliving it for him.  

"No, no--"  He wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tight, but careful to keep the burnt hand out of the way.  "You know that's not true.  None of it."

"But--"

"It's not true."  He pulled away enough to cup her cheek in his hand, staring down, willing her to believe him.  "Nothing they said about you was true.  Nothing they did to you was right."

"But it is real.  It really happened.  It is still happening--it will happen--"

Gary didn't have an immediate response to that.  He just pulled her in close again.  "It's real," he finally said, wishing with all his heart that it wasn't true.  "But we'll change it, somehow, I promise."

Her good arm came around his waist, and they leaned against each other, weak with relief at the breaking of this one barrier.  

"Do they do this to people where you come from?"  Her voice was muffled against his chest.

"Well, no, but--but we find plenty of other ways to hurt each other.  Hey," he added, when she relinquished her hold to dry tears with her fist.  "It's not gonna happen.  We'll find some way out of this.  There's still Fergus out there, somewhere, and--"

"--and Father Ezekiel."  Her eyes lit with hope, and Gary winced.  

"Uh, I'm not sure..."

"No, you do not understand."  She touched his sleeve.  "He was the one who made them stop."  

"What?"

"He pulled my hand out of the flame, he pushed them away, he--he told them they were wrong, that they should not--"  She faltered to a stop, took a step back.  "Why are you frowning at me?"

Gary tried to blink away his confusion.  "Nothing, it's just--what else did he say?"

"That--that he had new evidence to show them, and that they needed to send me back here so they could see it.  Gary?"  He moved over to rthe steps and sat down heavily, while Morgelyn stared at him.  "Gary, what is wrong?  I thought--this should be good news, should it not?  Perhaps he has spoken to Anna and convinced her to tell them all the truth."

Gary buried his face in his hands.  He wanted that to be true, and he did not want to explain to Morgelyn why he didn't think it was.  

There was a light touch on his shoulder, and he moved over to give her room to sit.  "I know I am shaken," Morgelyn said, though she sounded more like herself than she had since her return, "but you need to tell me the truth.  Do not hide anything, Gary, not now."

With a deep sigh, he lifted his head; saw her looking at him with her head tilted to one side, her eyes red and puffy.  "I talked to him, before--until just before we heard you--Morgelyn, he has it."

"What?"

"The Dragon's Eye.  And my clothes, and my paper--he thinks I've corrupted you, he doesn't trust me any farther than he can throw me.  He would have marched right in there and shown it all to them if he hadn't thought it would get you in deeper trouble, too."

Eyes wide, lips slightly parted, Morgelyn stared at him.  "But he stopped them."

"He stopped them hurting you, yes--I think he'd do anything for you, Morgelyn--and God knows, I'm grateful to him for it."

"But you are concerned about what he is telling them--or showing them--now.  About you."  There was a faint shake of her head.  "He would not do that--he would not hand you over to them just to--I will not let him, Gary."

But it made a strange, twisted kind of sense.  Gary was the stranger here, strange in more ways than one, and if he wanted to, he could show them things that the y would have to attribute to magic, and then maybe...maybe they'd leave her alone.  "Look, no matter what happens to me--"

"Nothing will happen to you!"  Morgelyn's eyes went wide with panic.  "You said it yourself: we can change this."

He'd gone into a burning barn once for the sake of trying, and ended up back home.  Maybe this was how time travel worked for him--fire and water, and relentless blows to the head.  "Maybe this is the way it gets changed.  Look, Morgelyn, what happens to me doesn't matter, as long as you--"

"What happens to you does matter."  She grabbed at his arm, her forehead creasing in three vertical furrows.  "It matters to me, it matters to your friends, and it matters to the people you are responsible for, with that newspaper of yours.  If it is a matter of one of us or the other, then--then I will confess.  I will tell them what they want to hear, and I will tell them I bewitched you.  They will release you and you can go home--"

"Morgelyn, no."  How could she do this, twist his own idea back in on itself?  "No, you are not going to die.  I--I thought you said you wouldn't lie just to stop them from torturing you."  He pointed two fingers at her, driving his point home.  "You said it was a sin."

She looked right back at him, perfectly level.  "To save another's life, I think God would permit it.  And I did perform magic."

Rubbing the back of his neck, Gary let out a frustrated breath.  "We've been over this before.  You didn't perform anything, you got caught up in it, just like I did.  There's nothing wrong with that, nothing sinful--Morgelyn, you don't deserve this.  You can't believe their lies.  I'm here to save your life, that's what this is all about, and that's why I should--"

"I did not use the scrying glass to save myself.  It was to save the village.  You need to live so that you can find a way to do that!"

"No."  He was starting to feel like a two-year-old.  "I'm here to save you.  Look, I'm not really religious.  I don't know what to think about God, and right now, I'm really not too big on the church.  But when I think about everything that's happened to me in the last couple of years, I know there's something or someone directing all of this.  Marissa called it a miracle once, and I guess it is--just like it's a miracle that I'm here.  Morgelyn, if I hadn't shown up--whether it was the paper or your Dragon's Eye that got me here--you would have died anyway--alone.  And the village would have been lost, too.  But something or someone didn't want that to happen.  I'm as sure as I've ever been of anything that whoever's in charge of all this, whatever's guiding it, wants you to live.  Why else do you think it finally worked when it did?  Why am I here now, and not two years ago?"

"But--but one of us has to get out of here, and save the villagers from Nessa, from what she wants."  Her eyes were tearing up again, whether out of pain, frustration, or the sheer weight of what stood before them, he didn't know.  But he sure as heck didn't blame her.

"Fine.  But what about the people who are sick, the ones who are gonna be sick later?  What will they do without you?  Morgelyn, believe me, I know, it doesn't work this way--you don't have to die to save them."

"Then neither do you."  Morgelyn's voice was choked as she slipped her hand into his.  "I--I could not bear that, Gary."  

For just a minute, he couldn't meet her eyes--he stared off at the far wall, and thought about Eleanor and Jessie Mayfield, and Morris Best, and what they must have thought happened to him when he ran into that barn.  And they'd barely known him, not like Morgelyn did now...

The afternoon sunlight--it must have been afternoon by now--had shifted while they talked, and now the patch on the floor was crawling toward the steps--west, their window faced west, toward home, and for some reason that thought gave Gary a bit of hope.  "Okay then," he said, and got stiffly to his feet, pulling Morgelyn along with him.  "I guess we'd better figure out what we're gonna do about getting out of here."

"Very well, Dragon Slayer."  Morgelyn tried to smile.  "What do you suggest?"







Chapter 61

I've held it in my hands, pressed my cheek against it
But it slipped through like water or sand
Or some well-intentioned words
I will never believe this is time wasted
I will not grieve
Anything with wings
          ~Carrie Newcomer


When she stopped in McGinty's foyer, Marissa could pretend that the past three days hadn't happened.  She was simply coming to work, pausing where the cooler outside air mingled with the warmth of the bar, and the muffled traffic sounds behind her gave way to the low hum of voices ahead.  Crumb and Patrick must have decided to open up, and that was fine with Marissa, if it meant one touchstone of normality among the ravages of this emotional storm.  If anyone had told her a few years ago that a downtown sports bar was going to feel like home, she would never have believed them, but in a way, it had turned out to be true.  

Maybe here in Gary's home there would be enough of his presence to help her keep believing.  Chuck would be here, too; Crumb had said he'd make sure of it.  If she could just make Chuck see what was happening, convince him that they had to help Gary, this could all come out right.  They could make it right together.

Marissa reached for the door handle, but it swung out from under her hand.  "Miss Clark!  You're here!  Hey, Spike!"  Patrick usually sounded thrilled to see her, even if she'd just come from the office, and now the effusiveness of his welcome was doubled--as was the volume.  "You guys been out in the rain?  You must be freezing.  I got coffee going, you want some?"

"Sh-sure, Patrick; thank you."  Buffeted from her moment of conviction like a gull on the wind, Marissa steadied herself in the doorway before she walked the rest of the way into the bar.  Immediately she realized that they were not, in fact, open for business.  The scent of burgers wafted from the kitchen, but it was probably just lunch for the handful of people who were here--Patrick and some of the other staff and...oh, no.

Listening to the voices a few yards away, Marissa swallowed hard and gathered herself in.  Crumb was there, but so were Bernie and Lois Hobson.  She couldn't make out what they were saying--McGinty's staff were coming and going, cleaning by the sound of it.  Their subdued conversations muffled the Hobsons' voices.  Spike tugged at his leash, no doubt wondering why she was just standing there when they usually headed straight for the office.

"Marissa."  She jumped when Crumb touched her elbow.  "You okay?  Fishman said--"  He cleared his throat.  "Well, he was kinda worried about you, and you've been gone a while."

"I'm fine," she lied.  "I just need to talk to Chuck.  Is he here?"

"Nope.  Said he had a couple errands to run--hey, he'll be here, he said he would," Crumb added, and Marissa knew he had seen her shoulders droop.  Just keep breathing, she told herself.  One thing at a time.  

"Hi, Miss Clark," said one of the waitresses as she passed.

"Good morning, Sarah," Marissa answered absently, not even sure if it was still morning.  It was an effort to stand upright and not get lost in the undertow of whatever was going on here--because something was happening, something had changed.  She could feel it in the air and hear it in Crumb's hesitant concern.

"Look," he said, "why don't we--"  

"Hey, there she is!" Bernie boomed, and they all jumped, even Spike.  "Marissa, c'mon over here, honey, have a seat."

It was too much--too many people, all at once, and she'd had no time to recover from her dream, from the park--Marissa bit her lip, wishing the bar would start to feel like solid ground.  Maybe she should try the office--she needed to sit down, but not with the Hobsons.  There wasn't any choice, though--Crumb nudged her forward, and Spike, the traitor, headed toward the table closest to the end of the bar, lured by the scent of hamburgers.  Marissa followed numbly.

"I think we should have meatballs at the get-together afterward," Lois was saying.  Marissa didn't miss the hitch in her voice.  "Gary--Gary always loved my meatballs."  

Oh, no.  Her feet stopped moving forward.  Nonono...this couldn't be what she thought it was.  She stalled for time by undoing Spike's harness.  "Go lie down, boy."  Spike trotted a few steps away, stopped for a moment, then continued; some distant part of Marissa's mind suspected that Bernie had slipped him a piece of his hamburger.  Closing the distance to Gary's parents felt like slogging through mud.  She heard a chair scrape out, knew it was Crumb who was offering it, but she couldn't bring herself to sit down.  Instead, she gripped the edge of the high table with one hand, praying for strength.  "What's going on?"

Crumb, still hovering, answered.  "We're--uh--we're trying to make some arrangements.  Lois and Bernie here want to have a--a--"

"Memorial service."  Bernie finished with that definite, 'I'm in control here' voice of his.  "We need the names of Gary's friends here in Chicago, so we can invite them all."

"And some of the people whose lives he's saved," Lois added.  "You know, Marissa, the ones who would remember.  I know we'll need a big church--Gary was so--he made an impact on people's lives, didn't he?"

"He--yes--"  She could barely breathe, let alone speak.  She had to get away from this--now.  Squeezing the shoulder strap of her bag so tightly her fingers ached, Marissa tried to find the words that would allow her to escape.  But Bernie and Lois were in front of her and Crumb was right behind, and any minute one of them would see, would know she was cracking apart.

"We have to keep this positive.  Gary wouldn't have wanted a buncha weepin' and wailin'," said Bernie.  "I'm thinkin' a Dixieland band, you know, with trumpets and banjoes and 'When the Saints Go Marching In'."

"Oh, Bernie, don't be crass."

"It's not crass--it's class!"

"What's not crass?  Here's your coffee, Miss Clark."  Patrick was there, too, joining the assault on Marissa's senses.  How could they plan Gary's funeral when he needed their help?  But how could she tell them, any of them, what she believed?  All she had to alleviate their grief were her own fears, and those were based on a dream and a crystal ball.  It would never work.

"It doesn't matter," Lois said, just as definite as her husband.  "I have a better idea.  Marissa can sing."

Marissa's heart skipped a beat.  Her mouth opened, but she couldn't speak.  

"Miss Clark?  Your coffee?"  Patrick nudged the warm mug against her fingers.  Still holding on to the edge of the table for dear life, Marissa didn't dare try to pick up the mug--she'd drop it, it would shatter, just like she was about to.  "I think it's a great idea, Mrs. H.," Patrick burbled.  "I mean, I know you hardly know me and I just started working here a couple months ago, but I've been saying we need a karaoke night, just because Miss Clark can sing so well and--Miss Clark?  Are you okay?"

Marissa nodded, sure that none of them would believe her.  Sing?  The word echoed around her brain, but she couldn't attach any meaning to it.  How could she possibly sing when Gary might be--was--in a place where--it was awful, it was--

It was evil.  Finally, she had a name for what she'd been fearing since very early that morning.  She couldn't stop the gasp that escaped.  

"Are you sure?"  Patrick's voice pulled her back into the moment.  "You look kinda--"

Crumb cleared his throat.  "Hey, Quinn, you wanna get those deliveries in from the alley?"

"Now?"

"No, yesterday.  Of course now!"

"Okay, Mr. C.  I'm on it!"

Patrick left, and everyone else seemed to let out a sigh of relief, but Marissa couldn't move.  

"Please, Marissa, won't you do this for us?  Gary says--he always said you have a beautiful voice," Lois said.

But Marissa's voice had deserted her.  Not upsetting the Hobsons was one thing, but to ask her to do this--it was too much to bear.  Maybe if things were different, if she could bring herself to believe this were true, it would have been easier to just give in to what they wanted--but it wasn't true.  She wouldn't let it be true.  

"Lois," Marissa finally managed, her voice small and distant, "I-I can't--"

"Of course she'll sing," Bernie declared, oblivious to the subtext.  "But we can still have a Dixieland band, maybe here at McGinty's afterward."

"But--"  Marissa whispered, wishing she could just turn away and walk--no, run--as far and as fast as possible.  

"Oh, I just knew you would!"  Lois sounded so sure of herself--didn't they know?  Couldn't they see what had to be written all over her face?  Marissa was still trying to voice her protest when Lois added, "You were such a good friend to Gary.  I knew you wouldn't let him down."

That was the moment when her heart finally splintered.  Marissa snatched her free hand away from the table, curling it into a fist at her side and wishing it would stop shaking.  She had to get out of there.

"Course she wouldn't."  Crumb patted her shoulder, and she had a feeling he wasn't talking about singing, even though Lois had meant nothing else.  But it was too late to hold herself together, and Lois missed Crumb's meaning entirely.

"I was thinking 'Amazing Grace'--"

Blinking hard, Marissa fought the tears that were stinging the corners of her eyes.  "Excuse me," she finally gasped.  "There are some things I need to take care of in the back."

"But what about the service?"  

"I--I can't.  I'm sorry."  Slipping out from under Crumb's hand, she pushed off the corner of the table, found the bar railing, used it to guide her to the office.  Of course Crumb followed.

"Marissa, wait."  His hand on her arm was meant to be gentle, like his voice, but he might just as well have been choking her.  

"I won't be part of this," she whispered.  "It's--it's grotesque."

"They just want some closure.  Look, if you don't want to do this, that's fine, you don't have to, but--"

"I can't do this."

Crumb released her shoulder, but before she could move he'd stepped in front of her.  "What is it--what's wrong?"

"I can't," Marissa repeated, wishing someone would believe her, at least about this.  She started forward, and this time he got out of the way.  To Crumb, the Hobsons, and whoever else might be watching, she must have seemed incredibly rude.  She turned back long enough to add, "Please, I just--I just need some time."  Hurrying into the office, she closed the door behind her--finally, blessedly, alone.  She let the bag fall from her shoulder, slumped back against the file cabinet, and buried her face in her shaking hands.  

But tears wouldn't come.  Maybe she wasn't ready to cry yet, or maybe she'd passed the point long ago.  After a few minutes her breathing steadied and the world--well, it didn't right itself, but it wasn't closing in on her anymore.  She could move, past her own desk piled high with unanswered mail; past Gary's desk, empty as far as her hands could tell; past the sofa where she told Spike to stay; up the stairs and to a door that she wished to heaven she needed to knock on, but there was no one there to care if she walked right in.  

And she started to, but as soon as she opened it, she knew something was off.  Not wrong, in the way that things had been wrong in her dream.  Just...not exactly what they should have been.  There were smells here that she wasn't used to, as if the loft itself had already given up on its owner's return.  Marissa couldn't pinpoint any one difference; maybe it was Lois's perfume or Bernie's soap; maybe they just used different detergent on their clothes than Gary.  Maybe it wasn't the presence of something new as much as it was the absence of what was familiar.  Cold pizza left in the box on the coffee table for two days.  Cat food and the litter box.  Newsprint and ink.

She ventured one more step in, but the loft refused to reassert itself and become its old familiar haven.  Pine Sol, she thought; someone had been cleaning.  It was as if Lois and Bernie, in an attempt to deny their grief, had eliminated every trace of Gary.  

No, that wasn't right.  She wasn't being fair.  Lois had probably just cleaned the place up out of habit, her domestic busy-ness a means to keep sorrow at bay.  The woman had a Martha Stewart complex that ran deeper than the Chicago River.  No one was trying to get rid of Gary.  

Except the evil in her dream, whoever or whatever it was, the fire, the...

She needed to sit down.  She wasn't sure which way down even was.  But she couldn't go forward.  Who knew what else they'd changed?  If they were already planning Gary's--his--Marissa's heart lurched at even the thought of the word 'funeral'--maybe they'd packed away his things.  She couldn't bear to find out.  

Not even bothering to shut the door, she turned away and walked out.  Halfway down the stairs she realized that the office would be just as bad.  She'd never be able to sit at her desk without expecting Gary to come in at any second.  Pulled down by the weight of the knowledge that he wouldn't, she sank down onto the step, gripping the railing for dear life.  

Halfway...she was halfway.  Halfway between somewhere and nowhere.  Halfway between belief and giving in, between hope and--

No, there was no halfway.  Hope was all there was.  It had to be.  For Gary's sake.  But she couldn't keep this up, not alone, not with the weight of everything that she'd felt downstairs pressing in on her, and the sheer terror that took hold whenever she thought about her dream.  Firetorn, it had warned, just like the voice in the lab--because if she believed that Gary was alive, then she had to believe that dream was real, too, didn't she?

Wrapping her arms around her legs, Marissa rested her forehead on her knees--just for a moment, she told herself.  Just until she felt warm again, just until the world felt like a steady, secure place.  But it wouldn't, not until she knew what had happened to Gary, and that wherever he was, he was safe.

Which, she supposed, was what everyone else thought, and why they were able to keep going.  They didn't think Gary was in danger any more--that he would ever be again--

Sniffling through unbidden tears, Marissa wished she could just get a handle on--on the truth of the situation, whatever it might be.  What was wrong with her, anyway?  At this point, she wasn't sure if she was losing her faith, or her mind.

Someone opened the door from the bar to the office.  Marissa pulled her head up and braced herself for a confrontation, swiping at her eyes.  Light footsteps tapped across the office floor, somewhat hesitant, not those of someone who knew where she--it had to be a she--was going.  A moment later, she caught a whiff of perfume-- feminine, but not flowery.  Not Lois, then.  

If it was a stranger, she would stay back here and hide.  But why on earth would Crumb have let a complete stranger walk into the office?  The footsteps neared, then stopped.  

"Oh, Marissa, you are here.  Thank goodness."

It had been several weeks since the last time Grace Best had stopped in to visit, but Marissa knew that voice, strong and warm and kind.  

"Aunt Gracie?"  In the months since they'd met her, Marissa and Gary had fallen into calling Chuck's aunt their own, and she seemed to like it.  It suited her--she was too much their elder to be Gracie, but Mrs. Best was far too formal.  

Reaching for the railing, Marissa started to get up, but Aunt Gracie said, "Stay where you are, dear.  I'm not so old and feeble that I can't manage a few steps."

"Of course you're not."  Marissa found herself smiling in spite of herself, in spite of everything, while the older woman climbed the stairs.  "You're nowhere near either one of those things.  But--"

"No, dear, no buts."  Aunt Gracie put a hand on Marissa's shoulder and lowered herself to the step.  "I came to see you, and this is where you are."

"Halfway..."  Marissa trailed off, nodding.  

"Hm."  Gracie's noncommittal noise was more of an agreement than a judgment.  "I was going to ask if you were all right, and then I realized what a silly question that would be.  Of course you're not all right."

"Oh, Aunt Gracie--"  Words flew out of Marissa's brain in the face of genuine empathy.  Aunt Gracie's hand was still on her shoulder, warm and secure, the first time since early that morning that Marissa felt there was something steady in her world.  More then ever, tears wanted to spill out of her eyes, and she wasn't doing a very good job of stopping them.  "I'm sorry--"  She sniffled like a heroine in some third-rate movie.  "Look at me, I'm falling apart, and making you sit on the steps and--"

Aunt Gracie shook her head, so close to Marissa that she could feel short, stiff curls brush her shoulder.  "There's nothing to apologize for.  It would be strange if you didn't fall apart at a time like this."

"No, you don't understand--"  Marissa broke off when a tissue was pressed into her hands.  

"No one out there seems to, either."  An edge crept into Gracie's voice.  "I'll have to have words with Marion.  I didn't expect that he, of all people, would leave you sitting alone on the stairs like this."

"No--no, it's not Crumb's fault.  I wanted to be alone--at least I thought I did.  They wanted me to--but nobody knows--"  Marissa's throat closed up, and she squeezed the damp, torn tissue into a ball.  "Did you draw the short straw, or did they just elect you to come after me?"

Warm fingers covered her own, balled-up tissue and all.  "Nonsense.  I volunteered.  I've been wanting to talk to you since I heard the news, but you have been extraordinarily difficult to reach.  Luckily that long-lost nephew of mine showed up at my door a little while ago and offered to bring me here.  He said you might need some company."

"Chuck?  Chuck said that I--"  Marissa swallowed with difficulty, wondering if she was ever going to finish two consecutive sentences.

"And that was all he said, though I suspect there is a great deal more to the story than that.  I believe," Gracie went on with a smile in her voice, "that he would have told me more, had he not been disappointed that I didn't make more of a fuss over his reappearance."

"Chuck needs you, too," Marissa managed.  "Last night, he--he--"

"I have a fairly good idea what he did last night."

"He's having a hard time," Marissa said softly, thinking about Chuck's escapade of the night before.  And still, as rotten as he had to be feeling, he'd come into her room when he'd heard her nightmare--and now this act of kindness.  "He came back to Chicago as soon as he heard the news, but it hasn't been easy for him to be here."

Aunt Gracie sighed.  "I have to admit, this place seems very strange without Gary Hobson in it."  The sentiment was so close to what Marissa had just experienced in the loft that she had to blink back more tears.  Gracie's voice lowered, softened.  "He was a good man, and you had a friendship that ran deeper than most.  I saw it from the beginning--to lose a friend like that--"  But Marissa shook her head, and Aunt Gracie broke off, waiting.  

Marissa opened her mouth, but no words would come out.  Gracie's hand moved to her back and traced circles; Marissa could feel the band on her ring finger through her sweater.  

"There's more?"

Marissa nodded.

"What is it, dear?"

She had to trust, to talk to, somebody.  At this point, she'd already fallen apart--what more could she have to lose?  It was a minute before Marissa could frame her response.  "Aunt Gracie, do you--"  She swallowed hard, then forged ahead.  "Do you believe in miracles?"

"Miracles?"  The question wasn't scoffing or incredulous.  It was gentle.  "Of course I believe in them.  I quite rely on them.  At my age, every new day seems like a miracle of its own."

Marissa smiled, barely, and clasped her hands together.  "I know, I agree, but--what about old-fashioned, biblical miracles?  Loaves and fishes, the lame walking, seas parting--that kind of thing."

"I see."  There was a moment of silence--acknowledgment, rather than hesitation.  "As a matter of fact, yes I do."

Marissa sucked in a breath, then added in a whisper, "Lazarus?"

The hand fell from her back and Marissa felt the little hope she had left, the hope that had prompted her trust, start to fray.

"My dear, I'm not quite--what are you saying?"

"I think--"  No, no she didn't just think.  "I have reason to believe, that Gary is--that he might be alive.  But I think--"  She lifted her hand as if to trace an explanation in the air, then dropped it helplessly.  "The more I think about it, the worse it gets, and the harder it is to keep believing."

Another brief silence, then Aunt Gracie said, "The way I understand it, you were there when Gary fell in the lake."  She didn't sound like Sergeant Piovanni--this wasn't an accusation.  Marissa nodded.  "Well, then I suspect you have more reason than anyone to know what happened."

"But I don't, that's just it.  I just--I don't think it was what everyone else thinks happened.  I don't believe Gary's at--at the bottom of the lake.  I know it sounds crazy, and I can't--I don't know if I can tell you all of the reasons why, because they might not be mine to tell, but--"

"Marissa."  Gracie shifted on the stair next to her, and her voice grew firm.  "You listen to me.  If you say it can be true, then that's good enough for me."

"It--it is?"

"No one else knows that boy like you do.  Not even, I suspect, Charles."  Once again, the long, gnarled fingers covered Marissa's own.  "As far as I'm concerned, you're the expert in this matter, and you're the one I trust.  If you think he is alive, then that's wonderful news, truly--oh, dear.  I should have brought more tissue, shouldn't I?"

For Marissa was tearing up again, gulping back sobs of relief.  "Y-you believe me?"  She steepled her fingers, covering her mouth, and felt tears run between her fingers like scattered raindrops.  Aunt Gracie reached over and stroked her hair, just like her grandmother had done, once upon a time, and then pulled Marissa's head down to her shoulder.  Marissa didn't resist--she had no resistance left.  She rested her head on a cotton sweater and a thin, bony shoulder that somehow felt more comfortable than a goosedown pillow.  

"Of course I believe you."  Aunt Gracie was still stroking her hair, her voice quiet but sure.  "Don't let that nephew of mine--or anyone else--dissuade you.  If they aren't strong enough to believe--"

"That's just it, isn't it?"  Marissa lifted her head, smeared leftover tears across her cheek with her palm.  
"They think I'm not strong enough to realize the truth, but it's not the truth.  Gary isn't dead.  We just have to find him, and help him and bring him back--but I don't know how, and what if my faith isn't strong enough?"

"If that were the case, you wouldn't be asking the question.  You are a person of tremendous faith, Marissa; it's clear to anyone who knows you."  Gracie's fingers lifted her chin, as if she wanted to look Marissa in the eye.  Appropriate, Marissa thought, that she should be spoken to as if she were a small child--she'd been acting like one the past few minutes.  "Of course it isn't easy.  If it were easy to believe, what would be the point?"

Marissa wasn't sure if she was being encouraged or gently chastised--until the fingers moved from her chin to her shoulder and squeezed in a gesture of mutual understanding.  "I find that for people who do not believe, believing seems the easy part.  They're wrong, of course--it's the most difficult feat of all, to find faith and hold onto it in the face of all that would destroy it.  If you can do that, however, the rest follows.  With faith come reasons, and with reasons come understanding."

"But I don't understand--"

"You will, my dear.  In time, you will."  Gracie sighed, then chuckled.  "Listen to me, I sound like a preacher, or a swami."

"I think you'd make a wonderful swami," Marissa told her seriously.

"As many years as I've lived, I do believe that's the first time anyone's ever told me that."

"Could be," said a new voice that made Marissa sit up straight, "but you used to preach at me all the time."

"Chuck?  Is that you?"  Her cheeks warmed at the thought of what he might have overheard.  "How long have you been there?"

"Long enough," Aunt Gracie told her quietly.

Chuck came closer; she could hear his footsteps on the lower stairs.  "Yeah," he said quietly.  "Maybe I've been away too long."

"Maybe you came back just in time," his aunt said.

There was silence for a moment, then Chuck asked hesitantly, as if he hadn't asked the same question several times over the past few days, "Marissa, do you--you really believe this?  You really think Gary's alive?"

"I--yes," Marissa said, and Aunt Gracie squeezed her hand again, lending her strength.  "I do."  Biting her lip at the fear that came flooding back when she remembered why she needed Chuck to believe, she added, "But Chuck--Gary--he's--that dream I had last night--something's wrong."

"Don't tell me.  He's in trouble again, and he needs our help."  Now that sounded like the Chuck she remembered, even if his words bounced more sharply than usual in the narrow stairwell.  "At least that's nothing new."

Fearful that she was misinterpreting, that it had been too easy to convince him this time, Marissa sucked in a breath.  "What are you saying, Chuck?"

"Look, the one thing that's always made me nuts about you is that you always manage to be right--about Jeopardy questions, about my love life, about Gary and the pa--well, about Gary," Chuck finished quickly.  "But even though you can drive me crazy, I've done enough gambling to know a good bet when I see it--even if everyone else thinks it's a long shot."

Aunt Gracie let out an indelicate snort.

"You gotta admit, sometimes it comes in handy."  Chuck sounded like...well, like Chuck again, Marissa thought, and her heart lifted.  "Come on, you two, you're making me uncomfortable just looking at you.  Let's at least go down to the office."

Marissa scooted to the side while Chuck helped his aunt to stand.  When Gracie started down the stairs and Chuck took her own hand, she hesitated.  "Are you sure?"

"Sure, I want to help you.  What are friends for?  Besides," he added as he pulled her to her feet, "if you're right, Gary'll kill me if I don't help out.  And if you're wrong, well, for once I get to be the one who says, 'I told you so.'"

"Charles Fishman, you will do no such thing," Aunt Gracie chided.

"Listen to that, will ya?  She's just as bad as Gary ever was--is," Chuck corrected himself.

"We can work on the verb tenses later.  Right now, we need to--"  Marissa stopped.  She wasn't really sure what they needed to do.  It was such a shock to actually have allies, after the horrible morning, that she didn't know how to proceed.  They joined Aunt Gracie in the office just as the door opened again.

"Everything okay in here?" Crumb asked.  "I--uh--I brought some sandwiches and stuff, if you want anything.  I'm just gonna set 'em right on Hobson's desk, here."  Marissa knew that last bit was for her benefit, as was Crumb's question:  "You okay, kiddo?"

"Yes."  She nodded.  "I'm--much better, Crumb.  Thanks."

"Huh."  He didn't exactly sound convinced.  "You know, Lois and Bernie, they didn't mean to upset you.  They just--"

"I know."

Crumb cleared his throat.  "Yeah, well, they took off to see about a--a church."

"A church for what?" Chuck wanted to know.  Marissa shuddered, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Closure," Crumb said briefly.  Chuck took a breath, and Marissa knew he was about to ask more, but Aunt Gracie saved her from having to hear another explanation of the whole ghastly thing.

"Marion, I would dearly love a cup of tea.  Do you think we could leave these young people to their own devices for a little while?"

"Uh...Okay, yeah."  Marissa could feel Crumb's stare, his concern, and she flashed a wan smile his way, but he wasn't the one she spoke to as the pair passed her on their way to the kitchen.

"Aunt Gracie, wait."  Marissa held her hand out, but Grace did her one better, pulling her into a warm, comforting embrace.  "Thank you.  If you hadn't been here, I don't know what I would have done."  

"Don't you give up," the older woman whispered.  "I'll work on the big guy."

Marissa's laugh choked its way around the lump in her throat.  If anyone could get through to Crumb, it had to be Grace Best.  "Thank you," she said again, and Aunt Gracie squeezed her hand again before leaving the room with Crumb.





Chapter 62

You call for faith:
I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists.
The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say,
If faith overcomes doubt.
         ~ Robert Browning


Chuck wandered over to the window, giving a wide berth to Spike, who sat on the floor near the couch.  The dog's huge head swiveled to stare at both of the humans in the room; he looked at Chuck as if all this weirdness was his fault.  One knee on the couch, Chuck craned his neck so that he could look out and up at the sky.  The rain had stopped, but the clouds weren't about to break any time soon.  He wondered if fall was going to settle in and cover the city like the wet blanket it could sometimes be.  Gloom and doom weather was one thing he really hadn't missed about Chicago.

He turned himself around and flopped down on the couch; watched Marissa take one bite of a sandwich and pull off bits of crust, crumbling them onto the napkin she held.  She just stood there doing that, not eating, not saying anything, lost in thought and nervous.  Twitchy.  Marissa was definitely twitchy, and if the weather hadn't been enough to set Chuck on edge, that was.  He wanted to ask her again if she really thought this was possible, if she really believed, but he knew better.  Her answer wouldn't change, and he didn't want to irritate her.  Poor kid had dealt with enough already.  When he'd seen her with Aunt Gracie, eyes all puffy and red, makeup smeared, he'd--well, despite what some people seemed to think, Chuck Fishman did not have a heart of stone.  

And he didn't want her answer to change.  He wanted to believe this.

Maybe he'd just had enough of grief, and of everyone acting so differently.  Maybe that was the difference--not that he did believe, yet, but that he was willing to admit that he wanted to.

It was more than just wanting, he told himself, more than a desire for things to be the way they'd been half a year ago.  Gary's disappearance really was strange.  He'd even gotten Crumb to admit as much in the car that morning.  Usually, the ex-cop had said, people who'd had "accidents" like Gary's turned up in a day or so, and given the extent of the search, there ought to have been something by now.  "But that doesn't mean he's not down there," Crumb had added hastily.  "Lotta stuff could have happened.  You know Hobson.  He was always the exception to the rule."

Well, if that was true, Chuck thought with another sidelong glance at Marissa, then why not this exception?  After all, he had some evidence of his own...he cleared his throat, trying to think of where to start.  He didn't know how Marissa would react to what he was about to tell her.  She might be thrilled, or she might be pissed with him for not telling him sooner.  Either one would be fine, as long as she didn't start crying again.

Marissa had given up on the sandwich.  It sat in a pathetic heap of wheat bread crumbs and ham on a napkin on the desk.  "What is it, Chuck?"  Wiping her fingers on a corner of the napkin, Marissa turned to him, expectant.  Man, that was what freaked him out about all this.  Where'd she get so much hope?  And what would happen to her if it turned out to be unfounded?  "There's no going back now," she added as if she'd read his mind.  "Whatever it is, say it."

"I--uh--I saw Cat yesterday," he mumbled.

Marissa gave a little jump, and the napkin's contents spilled onto the floor.  Spike hurried over to inhale them.

"You did?  Where--when--why didn't you say anything?"

Oh great.  A little bit of both the reactions he'd been dreading.  Gritting his teeth, he stood and paced past her to the filing cabinet, stared up at the Sistine Chapel reproduction on their wall.  Gary's wall, he reminded himself.  Marissa's wall.  Not his anymore.

"At the lake.  I was--I went to--"

"Gary's bench?"

"Well, yeah.  How did you know?"

Marissa made her way around the desk and sat in Gary's chair.  She ran a hand over the armrest.  "I was there this morning."  There was an echo of...something...in her voice, something lost.  Chuck tried to gloss over it with humor, even though he knew as he said it that he wasn't going to get away with it.

"And I left an imprint?"

"No.  I felt drawn there, too.  Maybe it's because everything started there, or maybe it's because Gary just--was himself there--but I can feel him there."  She sighed, and so did Chuck, a sigh of relief because he wasn't nuts for thinking the same thing.  Or at least if he was nuts, he wasn't alone.

"Yeah," he said instead of explaining that to Marissa.  He told her about Cat's appearance on the path, about it sticking its paw out over the lake.  "It pretty much freaked me out," he finished.  "I had to--I got out of there and went to--uh--"

"Get soused," Marissa finished.  But she didn't sound judgmental about it.

"Yeah."  Chuck sighed again.

"If Cat was there--and in the lab--he's trying to tell us something."  Despite her washed-out appearance, Marissa looked more determined than Chuck had seen her in the past two days.  "Gary needs us, Chuck."

"Yeah, uh--"  Chuck leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he looked up at Marissa.  "Exactly what kind of trouble do you think he's in?"  

"There was fire."  She reached up and rubbed her arms, as if she was suddenly cold.  "And--and stone.  But it was a cold place.  It felt evil.  I think he's hurt, Chuck, and scared."

His chest tightened.  "Gary's--are you sure?"

"I'm not sure of anything, except that he needs our help."  

Chuck felt something stir, something he hadn't felt in months.  He got up and paced the length of the office.  If Gary needed help, well, that was Chuck's department.  Always had been, ever since they were kids.  And no matter how weird the trouble, no matter how impossible the odds--Chuck slammed his hand on the filing cabinet, and Marissa jumped.  "This is right!" he exclaimed.  "Chuck to the rescue--why didn't I see it sooner?"

To his surprise, Marissa broke into a smile--rough at the edges, but maybe that was the makeup smeared around her eyes.  "I thought you thought I was crazy."

"Nah."  He paced back over to her and punched her shoulder.  "You're the psych major.  I figure if you were going crazy, you'd know it."

"Well, if you didn't before, you might now."  She pushed herself up out of the chair and made her way to the filing cabinet; fished around in her bag for a few seconds, then extracted the crystal ball thingy.  Turning back to Chuck with a deep breath, she said, "I feel Gary when I touch this."

He took a step back.  "You--you feel him?"

"Not every time, not right now, but sometimes.  Once, yesterday, I thought I could feel his fingers--it was like he was there reaching out to me.  And today--I could tell, Chuck, he's somewhere dark and cold and there's a fire and he was scared."  Marissa blinked back tears, and Chuck was suddenly very glad that there wasn't much of anything in his churning stomach.  "It was overwhelming.  And now I--I haven't felt him since.  Will you try?"

"Me?" Chuck squeaked.  "Try what?"

She held it out to him.  "Take it, Chuck, just hold it, and--and think of Gary and see what happens.  Please."

"What about his parents?  Shouldn't they--"

"No," Marissa said emphatically.  "They're so hurt, they couldn't even listen last night when I tried to--"  She closed her eyes for a second, and damn it, there *were* tears squeezing out of there.  What was he supposed to do about that?  He wasn't Aunt Gracie.  

"I tried, but I couldn't tell them, and they couldn't listen, and if it doesn't work, I don't want them--Chuck, please.  It has to be you."

"You gotta be kidding me," Chuck muttered.  He stared at the innocent glass and metal trembling in Marissa's outstretched palm.  

"Please," she whispered again.  "Just try, Chuck."

He took a deep breath and reached out to touch it, but the door flew open.  Marissa jumped, the ball tumbled out of her hands, and Chuck made an instinctive, fumbling catch.  It was heavier than he'd thought it would be, and he pulled it behind his back before looking up to see who'd come barging in.  

It was the kid, the bartender.  "Uh, oh, geez, sorry Miss Clark, Mr. Fishman."

"It's all right, Patrick."  Marissa turned toward the new arrival; his eyes grew round, his jaw hung open for three full seconds.  Chuck understood--anyone who knew Marissa would never expect to see her with a hair out of place, let alone her makeup smeared and her eyes puffy.  Patrick turned to Chuck, who shook his head, warning the kid to play it cool.  

Snapping his mouth shut, the bartender addressed Marissa.  "Miss Clark?  You've got company.  I tried to tell them we were closed, but they kept saying they had to talk to you.  I think it's about your school project."

"School project?" Chuck wondered.

"Oh!"  Understanding broke over Marissa's features.  "Chuck, these are the people who know about Gary's--our--the--"  She gestured in his direction, and Chuck ran a thumb over the cool glass, still behind his back.

"You're doing a class project about Mr. Hobson?"  Two seconds ago, Chuck wouldn't have thought it possible for Patrick's eyes to get any rounder, but now they did.  "Not that it doesn't make sense, I mean, he had that sixth sense thing going, and you're a psychology student."

"Sixth sense?" Chuck asked, incredulous.  Had Gary told this kid about the paper?

"I'll explain later."  Marissa started toward the door, but Chuck cleared his throat.  

"We'll be out in a minute."  He waited the two ticks it took for Patrick to take the hint.

"Oh, okay--uh--"

"Please get them something to drink."  Marissa didn't resist Chuck's attempt to stop her, but he could feel how tense she was from the way her arm muscle bunched under his hand.  When Patrick left, clicking the door closed behind him, she said, "He doesn't know about the paper, just that Gary gets feelings about the future.  He figured out that much on his own after Gary needed his help with a couple of stories."  

"How did you--never mind."  Chuck released her arm and pulled the globe back out in front.  "You might want to take a sec and freshen up before you go out there.  I mean, you look like you've been through the wringer.  I guess you have."

"We all have."  Her hand flew up to her disheveled pony tail.  "You're right, though, I am kind of falling apart."  

"Do you want to--uh--here."  Chuck pressed the contraption into her hands.  She just nodded.

"Go on out," she said softly, tracing a finger over the glass ball.  "I'll be there in a minute."

Out in the bar, it was still far too quiet for the middle of the day, the strangeness that had driven him to the office in the first place still hanging over the big room like a shroud.  A man and a woman were at the far end of the bar, taking off their coats and exchanging pleasantries with Patrick while he poured sodas.  The man shot a look Chuck's way when he heard the door close, but turned back to his companion almost immediately.  Chuck looked around the bar; he saw no sign of Crumb or Aunt Gracie, and the employees who had been cleaning up earlier must have gone home, or retreated to the kitchen.  And, like a tongue probing for a missing tooth, Chuck kept looking around for Gary, kept expecting him to pop up somewhere, somehow, and make this place feel right again.

"I'm ready."  Marissa's quiet voice at his elbow pulled Chuck out of his reverie.  Her hair was pulled back neatly, but she'd just wiped the makeup off without trying to reapply it.  In her hands she carried the object of Chuck's curiosity and trepidation. "Josh?" she called.

"Hey, good to see you again."  Grinning, the guy put his soda down and hurried down to the bar.  He shook Marissa's outstretched hand.  

"Josh Gardner, this is Chuck Fishman.  He's a friend of mine, he--he's interested in what you found out, too."  Marissa twisted the scrying glass in her hands while they exchanged "Hey"s.  Interested, Chuck thought.  Yeah, good word.  "Josh is the archaeologist I talked to yesterday," she explained.  

Chuck wasn't sure what to make of the new arrival--Josh Gardner wasn't exactly Indiana Jones.  He had light brown hair, long enough to show its natural curl, and it was pulled back into a pony tail that just brushed the nape of his neck when he turned and beckoned the woman to join them.  

"Actually, I'm still a student," Josh explained, blinking blue eyes that were narrowed and already surrounded by lines, as if he'd been squinting out in the sunlight for most of his life.

"But everyone knows that grad students do all the work anyway," the woman finished.  Like Josh, she wore jeans, sneakers, and a loose crewneck sweater, the Eddie Bauer look a couple of years past its prime.

"True."  Josh grinned again.  "Marissa Clark, Betsy Cooper.  I told you about her yesterday, she's an expert in--"

"Languages," Marissa finished, smiling faintly as she shook hands with the young woman.  "I remember--thank you for coming all the way up here."

"Well, I had so much trouble reading Josh's chicken scratch, I thought it would be easier to see it up close, and when we couldn't reach you at home we decided to give this place a try."  Betsy nodded briefly at Chuck, but her true attention was focused on what Marissa clutched in her left hand.  Betsy squinted, too, but her peering was more myopic than Josh's--the kind that came from staring at computer screens, like the writers who came to Chuck trying to sell their scripts.  She had auburn hair, so dark it was shading into chestnut, and it would have been gorgeous if she'd done anything other than clip it in the back, leaving the ends sticking up like alfalfa sprouts.

"Why don't we sit down?" Marissa suggested.  "There's a table over in the corner."  She headed for the farthest corner of the bar, and Chuck guessed she wanted to get these two out of the way in case Lois and Bernie came back.  Patrick hustled over with their drinks, practically oozing curiosity along with his helpfulness, but Chuck wasn't too worried.  He knew Marissa could handle the kid without hurting his feelings.  He was staring at the bar, trying to decide what he wanted--or would need--to drink during the conversation that was coming, when Crumb pushed through the kitchen doors.  

"Need some mugs back there.  Your aunt drink coffee or tea?"

"Uh, tea."  Chuck was looking back at the corner, where Patrick was handing their sodas to Josh and Betsy, and a cup of coffee to Marissa.  

"What's going on?"

"Well, those are--uh--somebody Marissa met at the university yesterday, I guess.  She thinks they might know something about that crystal ball Gary had."

"Huh."  

Chuck eyed the Scotch on the back counter, but Crumb pounded a third mug on the counter in front of him and grabbed the coffee pot.  "Look like a couple of hippies," he said as he poured.

 "You think anyone with hair longer than yours is a hippie."  Chuck accepted the coffee, Crumb's silent admonition, and took a sip.

"He's got a ponytail," Crumb pointed out.  He poured his own coffee, leaning his elbows on the bar.

"It's the size of my thumb!  They aren't hippies, they're grad students.  Archaeologists.  The hair is like a uniform with those types.  I mean, c'mon, Crumb, it's no longer than mine."

One bushy eyebrow lifted.  "That's not saying much these days.  So what is it, do you plan to hold a séance?"

"Yeah, sure."  Chuck flashed Crumb a look that belied his answer.  "She thinks they might know something that'll help us find Gary."

"Find him."  Crumb stared at him for a moment, an unreadable expression flashing out from under his eyebrows.  "Archaeologists.  You think he's down at the bottom of the lake looking for the Titanic ?"

"In Lake Michigan?  More like the Edmund Fitzgerald."

"Oh, I love that song!"  Patrick had returned, and he handed Crumb a tin of teabags from the counter behind the bar.  "Aunt Gracie likes these," he added, and, humming, busied himself arranging bottles on the back counter.

Patrick called her Aunt Gracie?  Chuck shook his head--things really had changed since he'd gone, but right now it really wasn't all that important.  "I gotta get over there."

"Fishman."  Chuck looked back at Crumb, who gestured at the table with the pot of hot water.  "You need anything, you let me know."

"Yeah, sure."  Chuck knew he meant more than food and drinks.  "Thanks."  Crumb grunted as Chuck made his way across the room and pulled out the last available chair.

"Okay, here's how it breaks down."  Her voice, her expression, everything about Betsy Cooper was animated.  The crystal ball sat on the table in front of her, and she waved her hands around it like some hack psychic at a county fair--except her nails were short and plain instead of bright red and pointy.  "Josh was right--the construction's old, maybe even ancient, and probably one of the British Celt cultures.  Silver and quartz--where they found a piece this clear, I have no idea.  But the language, what it says, that's not so old.  Maybe  Twelfth or Eleventh Century.  It's a Gaelic dialect--"

"Wait a minute--" Chuck squeaked.  "Eleventh Century?"

"Oh, yeah.  This design goes back at least that far," Josh said, "and the way the silver's been worked is consistent with other artifacts of that era."

"But, uh--"  Chuck turned to Marissa, who gripped the table edge and sat forward, her posture more tense than even Crumb's coffee could account for.  He wasn't sure he knew where to start asking questions.  "Who was living here back then?  Stray leprechauns?"

"This isn't from here," Betsy said patiently.  She tilted her head, and her alfalfa sprout hair waved at Chuck.  "It's Gaelic, Celtic--it's from the British Isles."

Chuck frowned, not at the linguist, but at the crystal ball.  If that was true, then what did this have to do with Gary?

"What about the inscription?" Marissa insisted.  Her hands curled atop the table on either side of her coffee mug--but Chuck was pretty sure the others wouldn't notice.  Even now, anyone who didn't know Marissa wouldn't realize how much she was holding back.

"That's why I needed to see it.  I think I have some of it, but I can hardly read Josh's handwriting."  Betsy hefted a full backpack onto the table beside her.  She extracted a couple sheets of paper, covered with scrawling black pen and smaller, neat printing in green, out of the backpack.  

"Hey, don't blame me."  Josh lifted the ball and peered at the underside, then handed it over to his partner.  "Some of those letters are almost completely gone."  

It was quiet for a few seconds while Betsy squinted at the underside of the stand.  She pulled a penlight out of the front pocket of her pack and shone it on the metal.

"There's writing under there?" Chuck hissed at Marissa.  She nodded.  

"Well, these letters aren't gone, and--"  Betsy flashed Josh a frown.  She shifted the crystal ball to one hand and scanned through the papers in front of her.  "You didn't even write them down."

"What are you talking about?"

"Right here, look at this."  

Betsy and Josh put their heads together, then Josh looked up at Chuck and Marissa, brow furrowing.

"What is it?" Marissa asked.  

"There are a couple of letters here that he missed."

"I didn't miss them, Bets."  Josh was still shooting his perplexed frown across the table.  "I swear they weren't there.  You guys didn't mess with it, did you?"

"No!  No, not--I didn't do anything to it," Marissa assured him.  "And Chuck was--he was out last night.  He didn't even know about the writing."

"No one did this last night."  Betsy used a pencil point to indicate--what?  Chuck leaned forward, but he still couldn't tell what they were talking about.  "See how the edges of the letters are worn away?  Not as much as the others, but they aren't new.  They could change the meaning--but it doesn't make any sense--and Josh, take a look at the way they're carved.  Notice anything?"

"Yeah, they're a lot cruder.  But I don't get it.  Why would anyone add that?  It's not even a word, it's an ending.  Even I know that."

"What is it?"  Chuck demanded.

"In Gaelic it's a word ending, but here it's not attached to anything," Betsy mumbled.  "It'd be like putting 'ing' at the end of a sentence, after the period."

Sick and tired of being the odd man out, Chuck sighed.  "So you're talking about a couple of letters?  What about the rest of it?"

"Marissa, you try.  I need someone to defend my honor here."  Josh pressed the globe into her hands and guided her fingers.  "Feel it?  Right there.  That wasn't there yesterday, was it?"

Chuck peered over Marissa's arm; finally, he could see the carving they were talking about, but couldn't make sense of the scribbling lines.  For all he knew, they weren't even letters.

Marissa finally shook her head.  "I--I'm not sure.  It just feels pretty much--I mean, I can't tell what it says.  I don't remember letter shapes very well.  It does feel a little rougher than the rest of them."

"What does it mean?" asked Chuck.

"That's just it; this might change what it means," Betsy said impatiently.  "May I have it back?"  She spent a few minutes checking her papers against the base of the globe, turning it this way and that and sticking her nose right up against the metal.  Josh watched Betsy; Chuck alternated between sipping his coffee and looking from Betsy to Marissa--Marissa, who pulled her hands into her lap and sat as tense as a--as a director at a financing meeting, Chuck thought, and wondered absently how many of those he was missing.  Not many, if his past track record was any indication.

Finally, Betsy looked up at all of them.  "Okay, here's what I was trying to translate last night," she said.  "There's a word here that I think is a name: Efflam.  Then there's a verse:

"Aon de misneach, aon de creideamh,
Aon d'amharc glan;
Fite fuaite in am an ghátair
Beidh siad an mallacht dragan."

"Oh, that's real helpful," Chuck drawled into the puzzled silence that followed her pronouncement.  It had all sounded like a bunch of tongue-swallowing nonsense to him.

Betsy lifted her eyebrows at him with a grin that he might once have found suggestive.  "It roughly translates to..."  She flipped one of the papers over.  "Here:
One of courage, one of belief...probably faith,
One of clearest sight,
Woven...or tangled...or something, I'm not sure...
when need is...something...
will break the curse of the dragon."

"Doesn't sound so rough to me," Josh said, admiration evident in his voice.  He sat back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest.  "Nice work, Coop."

Betsy shrugged and pulled a worn, oversized paperback out of her backpack.  Thumbing through it--it was some kind of dictionary, Chuck realized--she said, "Well, I filled in the holes with some guesses, and they turned out to be close, now that I look at the real thing.  I think I might have seen this verse somewhere before, but for the life of me, I can't remember where.  It's typically vague.  Could be an incantation, or an invocation...that line about clearest sight is probably a reference to truth."

"The Celtic druids were really big on the power of truth," Josh explained.  "Not as a virtue, but as an actual power.  In some of their stories, speaking the truth out loud could tear down walls and put them back together again."

"What do you think this incan-whoozeewhatsit was supposed to do?"  Chuck still wasn't convinced that all this effort meant anything.  He'd been expecting some cosmic road map to Gary, but this didn't sound like it was anything but an old rhyme.

"Break the curse," Betsy said, flipping through the pages of her dictionary.

"Yeah, but--a dragon's curse?"

"It could mean anything."  Without looking up at Chuck, she trailed her finger down a page, then pulled out a green pen from the pack and started writing on the napkin next to her soda.

"What about the extra letters?" Marissa asked.  "Do they change anything?  Are they important?"

"I don't know," Betsy mused.  "They don't seem to be.  They don't change the meaning, tacked on at the end like that, but just to have a random 'gh' in there seems very strange.  I wonder if the rest of the word was rubbed off somehow."

Her mug halfway to her mouth, Marissa froze so abruptly that coffee sloshed out onto her hand.  Chuck took the cup away, staring at his friend.  "Wh-what did you say the letters were?" she whispered.

"GH.  It's a very common ending in the Gaelic languages."

"It couldn't have been rubbed off," Josh insisted, peering over Betsy's shoulder.  "Everything before it makes sense, according to you, and after it there's a little blank space, where I don't think anyone ever wrote anything."

Chuck barely heard the young man over the pounding in his ears.  He set the mug down carefully, then covered Marissa's hand, still arrested midway to her mouth, with his own, and lowered them both to the table.  

"It looks different from the other lettering?" Marissa asked in a shaky voice.

Josh looked up, his eyes widening when he noticed Chuck and Marissa's shocked reactions.  "What's wrong?"

"Sh-show them to Chuck.  Please."  She twisted her hand so that she was gripping Chuck's, asking him for confirmation with the pressure of her fingers.  He had to pull his hand away to take the weird little thing.  "Chuck, do you recognize--"  She didn't finish.  

"Well, yeah, I can see how it could be those letters," he said carefully.  Betsy offered him her flashlight, and he shone it on the underside of the base.  The carvings were there, indistinct and blurred by time, blurred in Chuck's mind as well, because he couldn't even tell what letters some of the squiggles were supposed to be.  But when Josh tapped a finger at a particular spot, Chuck squinted and focused the flashlight on it...and yeah, that could be a GH.  He gulped.

"Is it--is it possible that those are initials?" Marissa asked.  

"I guess, yeah."  Betsy shrugged.  "They could be anything."

Chuck set the crystal ball down, handed the flashlight back to Betsy.  This was too weird.  What could it mean if Gary's initials were on some ancient relic?  How many people in the past few hundred years had those same initials?  

"And they weren't there yesterday?" Marissa pressed.  "Josh, are you sure?"

"I--I don't--"  The young man looked from Marissa to Betsy and back, nearly as confused as Chuck felt.  "I don't know for sure.  But I just think I would have noticed them.  Betsy, I can see them in the lighting here, in a bar.  I would have seen them in the lab."  He stared at Marissa, who sat stock-still, one hand covering her mouth.  "Your friend.  The one who gave you this scrying glass.  The one who drowned the other day.  I went back and looked at the paper.  His name was Gary.  Gary Hobson."

The theme from The Twilight Zone tinkled in the back of Chuck's head, and he sucked in a breath.  Betsy raised an eyebrow at him, then turned to her partner.  
"You do realize, Gardner, that if this is another one of your pseudoscience magical theories I'll have to haul out Demon-Haunted World and whap you on the head with it."

Josh was still staring at the crystal ball.  "Wouldn't be the first time," he muttered.






Chapter 63

I think rather of the mysterious last petitions of Lord's Prayer:
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  A petition
against something that cannot happen is unmeaning.  There exists
the possibility of being placed in positions beyond one's power.
          ~ J. R. R. Tolkien


The afternoon wore on in halting conversations and fruitless plans.  There had to be some way out.  Gary kept telling himself that; even told Morgelyn a few times, though he wasn't sure she heard him.  He went on talking anyway, telling her everything that had passed between him and Father Ezekiel, and then about the night before at Nessa's--well, almost everything.  He didn't want to explain that kiss.  Considering all that had happened since, just thinking about it made him queasy.  

Nodding absently, Morgelyn kept right on with her self-appointed task in their search for an escape, using her good hand to trace the stones in the walls for a crack that was more than ancient construction crumbling to ruin.  Gary was doing the same with the floor stones,  pushing the layer of straw, dank with age and grime and he didn't want to know what else, into a pile in the far corner as he searched for a trap door, a seam in the stone, a loose rock concealing an escape tunnel or...something.  Anything.  

He tried to stifle his grunts and groans, but it wasn't easy.  There were aches and pains in his shoulder, ribs, and legs, and a constant dull throb in his head.  The only advantage to having been a punching bag was that no one injury could really bother him all that much.  Instead, they took turns; before one could become overwhelming, another would start up.  

"And then Fergus and--well, Fergus came out in the hallway and made too much noise, so we had to hustle back to the main room.  I don't think Nessa knew it was us, though."  There was no response; Gary glanced across the room and saw that Morgelyn had stopped to rest her burned hand on the cool stone.  It didn't seem to help.  Her mouth was still drawn in a tight, thin line, and her eyes remained unfocused, as if her mind or her spirit or both were trying to escape, not just this prison, but her own body as well.  Gary'd had enough minor burns to know how long and how fiercely they could hurt if he didn't get ice on them right away, but something like this--setting his own jaw in a tight square, he ignored the protest from his bruised muscles and doubled his efforts.  He didn't know what else he could do to make things better.  He most definitely did not want to think about how much worse they could get.  But if the paper wanted him there--and it had sent him to Morgelyn's house that morning to make sure he'd be here now, of that he was certain--then there had to be a way out.  There had to.

"You keep saying that.  But how do you know?"

Morgelyn's soft, weary question startled Gary--he hadn't realized that he'd spoken out loud.  Turning from kicking more spoiled straw out of his way, he found her leaning against the wall just under the window, eyes closed.  

"Well, I--I told you how I know."  It was only a couple long steps across the room, and he was close enough to lower his voice to a whisper--a relief, because his throat was still sore from yelling earlier.  "Because this stuff always happens for a reason.  I wouldn't be here if I wasn't supposed to help you, if there wasn't some way to get out of this."

She didn't open her eyes, didn't move.  

"Look, you don't have to do this.  Why don't you rest--just sit down, okay?"  Gary reached for Morgelyn's arm, meaning to guide her over to the stairs--for some reason they seemed safer, less dirty, maybe because the afternoon sun was falling on them.  But she went limp and sank right to the floor--teetering a little, instinctively reaching out with both hands to catch herself.  She sucked in a breath when Gary caught her left arm before her hand could make contact.  Kneeling next to her on the floor, he realized with a flip of his stomach that she was shaking, staring off into semi-darkness, into nothing.

"Morgelyn?  You with me?"  Gary waved his free hand in front of her face.  What was going on, why was she zoning like this?

"I am cold," she whispered

"I know."  But he didn't.  It was cool for June, maybe, but not cold, not worth shivering over.

"So cold, but it burns..."  She looked down at her hand, and Gary released her wrist.

"Morgelyn, look at me."  His voice sharp with worry, Gary shook her shoulder.  "Do you know who I am?"  

She blinked at him, the light of recognition returned to her eyes, and the world tilted back to normal.  "Gary."  Letting out a deep breath, she shifted back against the wall.  Her movements were slow, but her eyes weren't so unfocused and disconnected.   "It hurts.  I cannot stop it."

"Your hand hurts?"

She nodded, still shaking.  "The pain waxes and wanes.  But there is nothing we can do for it here."  Her stare went to the doorway.  "This is what they wanted all along..."

"Hey, just stay with me."  Gary's voice rose as he tried to keep her attention by sticking his face in close to hers.  "Keep talking, look at me when you talk to me, okay?"

"...do not wish to go back..."

"Morgelyn, look at me, stay with me," he repeated, mentally adding to his tally of stupid Hobsonisms.  Who'd want to stay down here?  But she had to, because otherwise it would mean she was losing her grip, going into--going into shock, oh hell, was that what was happening?  

"How can we withstand this evil?" she murmured, but to the shadows, not to him.  

Gary tried to remember anything he'd ever heard about shock, but all he could conjure up was blankets--people on TV rescue shows piling blankets on victims who were slipping into delirium or unconsciousness.  He didn't have any blankets, didn't even have a coat to wrap around her shoulders.  Why hadn't he realized right away that this could happen?  

Fighting back the panic that had become his constant companion, he tried to think of something that would help.  Boots, he realized with a guilty start when she pulled her bare feet under her skirt, huddling into a tight ball.  He'd thought of them once, back when--and then forgotten entirely.  It was easy enough to unlace the boots that he'd been wearing and hold them out to Morgelyn, finally recapturing her attention.  "You're going to put these on, okay?  I'll help."

"Your boots?"  She stared at him, but at least she was looking at him, and not through.

"C'mon, you'll be warmer if your feet are covered, and I'm not gonna let that thug step on your toes again if he--"

Eyes going wide, Morgelyn sat up straight.  "Are they coming back?"

"No!"  But Gary couldn't resist looking back over his shoulder at the door, just to be sure.  "God, no.  I just meant if they do, it would be better if you had these on.  Here, give me your foot--"

One breath, then another, and she was back, looking right at him.  "What about you?"

"I love going barefoot, did it all the time as a kid."  Gary didn't add that, as a kid, he'd never been locked up in a dungeon with rotting straw and rats.  "Besides, it's your turn, okay?"  He grabbed the foot that peeked out from under the torn hem of her dress before she had a chance to change her mind.

"What is a thug?"

"A wha--oh."  Luckily, the boots were soft and flexible enough that with a little creative tucking and lacing they almost fit her feet.  "It's--uh, it's someone who enjoys hurting other people."  Gary watched Morgelyn closely as he put on the second boot.  Her shaking had subsided into an occasional shiver by the time he'd finished.  "Does that help any?"

"My hero," Morgelyn whispered by way of an answer, and shook her head when Gary protested.  "You truly are."  Crossing her arms tight against her chest, she drew back against the wall again.  "Were I alone, I doubt I would be sane right now.  Fergus was right.  I am not strong enough for this."

"No one is."  Gary rocked back on his heels.  "But if you ask me, you're doing better than most people would."

A ghost of a smile crossed Morgelyn's face, then flitted away.  "Where do you think he went?"

"Fergus?  I don't know."  Gary stood and resumed his search through the straw, though he kept close to Morgelyn as he worked--without result.  There were plenty of cracks in the old stone, but none of them led anywhere.

"Would they bring Fergus here, too?  Do you think they would hurt him?"

"He's not in the story in your book, so I think it's more likely that he's run off somewhere to hide--but maybe he'll come back if he thinks it's--safe."  He faltered on the last word, and kicked the remains of the straw into the corner with a vicious movement that sent a stab up the back of his leg.  Idiot.  Why'd he have to go and remind her that it wasn't safe now, and it wasn't going to get any safer?  

"You mustn't blame him if he does not."

"But he's your friend."  Supposed to be mine, too, Gary thought.

"Yes.  And he has been my friend for a very long time, through some difficult, awful times.  He may come back, but if he does not, I will understand."  Morgelyn's words rose up to Gary through the shadows, quiet but insistent.  "Fergus is not used to being in one place, to having roots.  He never knew his family, did he tell you that?"

"Kind of hinted at it, I guess."  The end of his fruitless task left him drained.  Gary settled in next to Morgelyn.  He gritted his teeth as he eased his legs onto the unyielding stone.  His feet were cold, and already blacker than the shadows around them, but at least now he could be sure that giving Morgelyn the boots had made a difference.

"He was a foundling, left at an abbey in Scotland."  Her legs were still curled under her skirts, and Morgelyn's voice went a little faraway, but not like it had before.  She sounded like she had when she'd told stories to the children.  "The monks raised him for a while and tried to make him into a scribe, or an apothecary, but I believe he must have gypsy blood.  He ran away when he was very young, not even a man yet, and made his way all through the world--singing and storytelling, as he would have it, but more likely talking--and probably sometimes stealing--his way into a meal here, a bit of clothing there, and the occasional night by a hearth fire. He has hardly ever stayed more than a week in the same place since."

Gary frowned.  "But if he knows you need his help--"

"What if he cannot help?  He will not be able to bear it if--he will not stay and watch--"  Morgelyn closed her eyes and swallowed.  "I am the closest thing he has to a family, and he may not be able to make himself stay if he believes that I--that we--"  She picked at  a rip on her sleeve.  "--that there is nothing he can do to help.  If that book is telling the truth, then I--I would rather he did go.  I would rather have him safe."

His scowl deepening, Gary shook his head.  "There has to be something he can do to help.  He shouldn't just give up."

Propping her elbows on her knees, Morgelyn rested her forehead in her hands.  "He cannot pull us out that tiny window, and not a soul will listen to him in this town, not now."

Gary craned his neck, trying to get a read on what she was feeling.  She sounded completely used up.  "You aren't giving up, are you?"  If Morgelyn ran out of hope, then what was the point?

"I do not see how--if Father Ezekiel believes the Dragon's Eye is evil magic, then he will not defend us.  And if he does not believe it--"  She gestured at the doorway with an open palm.  "Why is he not here?"

As if on cue, footsteps sounded in the hall outside their door.  Scrambling to his feet, Gary held his breath, praying he'd been right.  Iron grated on iron, then clattered on stone.  "Salve nos," Morgelyn whispered behind Gary; the door creaked open, and a small figure stepped through.  

"Really, this place is perfectly awful," Nessa declared with a regal sniff.  The two guards at her heels, she crossed the landing carefully, her nose wrinkled as she peered into the gloom.  Glad for the shadows that shrouded his face and hid his surprise, Gary stepped away from Morgelyn, hoping she'd stay back there in the dark, unnoticed and safe.   

"Gary, is that you?  Oh, dear, how have you borne this?"  Nessa glided down the stairs, skirts held high, staying in the faint light the way a model would stay within range of a camera lens.  Hearing a soft rustle behind him, Gary motioned for Morgelyn to stay where she was and took a step toward Nessa.  "This has been a terrible mistake," she said with what sounded like genuine worry in her voice.  Hands on her hips as she surveyed the gloom, she declared, "You must leave this dreadful place."

Nessa was the last person Gary would have cast in the role of savior, but it didn't matter whose the idea was--it was the best one he'd heard all day.  "Thank you," he breathed, and turned to offer a hand to help Morgelyn up.  But as he pulled her to her feet, Nessa's soft chuckle sent a chill down his spine.

"Not her, Gary.  Have they addled your wits?"

He spun back around.  Part of his brain was scolding him for having trusted her even for a split second when a few minutes ago he'd been willing to blame her for the whole thing, but the other part, the part that hoped, still wanted to believe this could happen.  Both his hands came out, first pleading with Nessa, then gesturing back at his friend.  "Lady Nessa, I don't know what you think is going on here, but Morgelyn's not--she's not a witch, and they've already hurt--"  The kick at his ankle was light, more of a nudge, but that and the desperate look Morgelyn flashed him were enough to stop him from going into details.  "You have to get us out of here, both of us."

A bark of a laugh came from the shorter guard.  Nessa silenced him with a look, then turned back to Gary.  

"I came for you, Gary--only you."  Her voice dropped to a softer, more seductive tone.  "After last night, I should think you know why."  The filtered sunlight on her face couldn't hide the way her gaze slipped past Gary to Morgelyn, telegraphing jealous triumph.  It all came clear to him in that moment--this was some kind of contest to her.  Everything was a contest in her world.  Nessa thought she'd won this one, that he would leave with her; she honestly believed he'd leave Morgelyn alone, with no one to stand between her and those guards and the men upstairs.  

She made a clucking noise as she touched his sleeve.  "They have hurt you, I can see that--and for that, I am sorry.  I only sent the guards to stop the rioting in the village, and my guest, Brother Banning, has been kind enough to offer his services to help quell this unrest."  The touch turned into a caress, sending goosebumps of revulsion crawling over Gary's skin.  "If I had known you would leave to throw yourself in harm's way, I would have stopped you--you must believe me.  After last night, I thought we were friends."  Wide grey eyes blinked once at him, and her lips curled in a suggestive smile.  "I thought we were more than friends."

Gary held his breath again, sense warring with fury.  Just how stupid did she think he was?  He knew better than to let the full extent of his anger show, not with those guards up there with their weapons, not with Morgelyn an easy target just behind him, but damn, he was tired of playing games.  "Nessa," he said, pushing the anger away and forcing himself to match her calm tone, "if you really cared about me, you'd get us out of here."

"Which is what I intend to do."  Her hand fell away from his arm, and her smile seemed to say that all was now settled.  "I will tell them all that you are my ally, on my side, and they'll drop any charges against you."

"What about Morgelyn?"  Behind him, Morgelyn took a step closer, sucking in a breath as if she were about to say something.  He tried to motion to her to keep quiet with a wave behind his back.  But Nessa had noticed, too.  She tilted her head, stared at Morgelyn for a moment with a gaze as sharp as steel, then blinked, carefully placid, as her attention returned to Gary.

"There is nothing more to be done for her."  The cold, matter-of-fact tone might have been appropriate for a broken toy, Gary thought, but not a human being.  "I know you believe you are being kind, and it makes you more of a gentleman than even I thought possible, but surely you know that the villagers would attack her if I were to set her free.  This is the kindest thing we can do.  Giving her a chance to confess her sins before she leaves this world is an act of generous mercy."

"M--mercy?" Gary sputtered.  This was beyond insane.  Once again, he sensed movement behind him, and turned to see Morgelyn, her mouth working but no sound coming out, eyes wide with fear and anger and incredulity.  She cradled her injured hand to her side.  "I won't--" he started to tell her, but Nessa clenched her hand around his arm again, demanding his attention by digging her nails through the rough cloth of his shirt.  

"Gary, listen to me--listen to reason.  Everything I offered you last night can still be yours.  All of it."

For a moment, their eyes locked.  Gary's next words were forced through a clenched jaw.  "If you think I would do this, then you don't know me at all."

Hard anger flashed across Nessa's face, then was gone, replaced with the smooth, satisfied mask.  "I know exactly who you are, Gary Hobson," she said with such absolute certainty that his stomach did a somersault.  She straightened her shoulders and her eyes went cold as a snow sky.  "You are the dragon slayer."  
Nessa raised one eyebrow at Gary's stunned, open-mouthed reaction and Morgelyn's faint whispered, "No..."

"The--the what?" Gary stammered.  How could she--how much did she know?

"Dragon slayer."  Nessa lifted her hand from his arm and gestured at Morgelyn, who'd stepped forward and was now standing at Gary's side.  "Her legendary hero.  You are too unlike any man I have ever known to be anything but extraordinary, and while the people of Gwenyllan may be a pack of simpletons, I most certainly am not."

"But I'm not--I've never even seen a dragon!"  Grasping for firm footing in a conversation that seemed to have taken a right turn off a cliff, Gary ignored the voice in his head that whispered, until now...

"Dragons are not what interest me."  Obviously satisfied with the upper hand she'd gained, Nessa pointed a long finger at Gary.  "You know--you both know--something about that treasure.  It is real, and somehow you are a part of the story.  Where is it?" she pressed, lifting her hand up and out as if she expected to be told it was somewhere in that dungeon.  "Where is the dragon's treasure?"

"W--what treasure?"  Gary was no actor.  He couldn't play innocent for long, but he had to try.  Father Ezekiel knew about the Dragon's Eye, about the magic, but Gary still refused to believe that he'd ever sell Morgelyn out.  But if Nessa knew, and if she convinced the others to believe it, his friends were doomed.

"The Dragon's Eye.  Morgelyn is not the only one who can read.  There is an account of that same story in the records of the manor house; we searched this place high and low, but found no treasure.  Unless it is buried with Efflam--and I hardly think that is the case--someone in the village must have it.  Someone who thinks she knows what is best for all her neighbors; someone who might know enough about the old ways to actually make it work."  

Nessa tilted her chin at Morgelyn with a cold smile, and Gary could feel Morgelyn vibrating--with fear or fury, he wasn't sure.  "A witch indeed," Nessa added before lifting an eyebrow at Gary.  "It brought you here, did it not?"

His mind raced.  Did he try to lie about it all?  Did he confess to part of the truth she wanted to hear, to all of it?  What would get them out, both of them, safe?  What would Nessa believe, and what would she do to get what she thought she wanted?  He sucked in a breath of rank air, then let it out in a rush.  "I can show you where it is."

"Gary, no!"

Ignoring Morgelyn's hissed protest, Gary took a step closer to Nessa, forcing her to crane her neck to keep him in her sights.  It wouldn't be worth anything, not to Nessa, but it would be a chance, a deal he could make.  His voice was steady and deliberate.  "You let Morgelyn go.  Right now.  She has nothing to do with this.  You let her go, and I'll get you the Dragon's Eye."

"You will do no such thing," Morgelyn snapped.  "You cannot.  The entire village--"

"Hold your tongue, girl, or I will have the guards do it for you."  At a quick motion of Nessa's upraised hand, the men hurried down the stairs.  Gary felt Morgelyn's shaky fingers curl around his arm, just above the elbow, and a lump the size of a basketball lodged in his esophagus.  

Apparently satisfied, Nessa turned her attention back to Gary.  Her eyes were glowing with--with what?  Triumph?  Greed?  "Bring me to the Dragon's Eye, and you can have anything you want."

"No, you let Morgelyn go, first, right now, and then I'll--"

"That is not a choice.  I simply meant that her end could be quick and relatively painless--"  Nessa raised one manicured hand and snapped her fingers at the guards, who came a few steps closer.  "--or we can let Brother Banning continue his work until he has secured her confession."

That was it.  Forget about bargains, forget about games.  Gary's next step backed Nessa up toward her own guards, and he didn't even try to hide the fury in his voice.  "I'm telling you right now, you let them get any closer to her, lay one hand on her, and this--this conversation is over.  It's all over, you can forget about me or about the Dragon's Eye or getting anything, anything at all out of this except the deaths that will be on your head."

"On my head?"  A glimmer of doubt shot through Nessa's cool facade.  "If blood is to be shed here, it will hardly be my responsibility."

"It will be, if you let this happen when you have the power to stop it."  Gary took a deep breath, and wondered how to reach the more humane version of the lady he'd seen the night before.  "Don't do this Nessa, it isn't worth it.  You don't know what you've unleashed here--you're not just going to own this village, you're going to destroy it.  Those people aren't any good to you if they're sick or dead."  

"Their land will be enough," she said.  

"But if the story is true--"

"Then I can have the treasure and the land both, and that is the only truth I care for."

"You wouldn't know the truth if it was standing right in front of you.  Which, by the way, it is."  Gary gestured back at Morgelyn; he could feel her staring at him, wide-eyed and just as scared and angry as he was.  

The cold, harsh light in Nessa's eyes, even in the dimness of the basement, took his breath away.  "You would stay in this filth, waiting for an end that will only be painful, a vain death that will accomplish nothing?"

"No," Morgelyn breathed.  Stepping back to her side, Gary put a hand on her shoulder, determined to make sure that she knew he wouldn't, not for one second, leave her there alone.

"If the choice is going with you, or staying here, I'll stay.  The company's a lot better."

Every trace of pretense fled.  Nessa clenched and unclenched her fists at her sides and gave a short, disbelieving breath of a chuckle before fixing Gary with the same cold, assessing look she'd been giving Morgelyn all along.  "You are making a grievous mistake," she said quietly, then pronounced, "It is a shame that Banning did not have time to finish his lesson.  That can be remedied shortly."  The way she looked at Morgelyn, like a lioness taking possession of a carcass, drove every inbred notion about how a gentleman should treat a lady from Gary's head.  If not for the guards, he would have...well, what?  Anything, he promised himself fiercely, anything to stop the shoulder under his hand from shaking.

"Get out," Gary growled.  

Something in Nessa's face changed, and just for a moment Gary saw that little girl again, the one he knew was in there somewhere.  He could have sworn she was asking him not to make her do this, to give her a way out that wouldn't involve killing that innocence forever.  Did Nessa know, did the part of her that was still so young and vulnerable, know what she was doing?  Did she understand the responsibility she bore for what was about to happen?  It didn't matter, because she was buried, lost inside the other Nessa, the stronger, harder one who'd protected that little girl to death.

Nessa blinked, and all that uncertainty fled--this time, Gary was sure, for good.  "I am certain Brother Banning can find out the location of the Dragon's Eye from one of you, or both.  He will send for you when he is ready.  When you are broken and burning, begging for mercy," she said to Gary, "remember how I offered it and more, and how you refused."

Head held high, she turned and swept up the stairs.  The guards let her pass, then followed her up and out.  Gary watched grimly, hardly noticing when Morgelyn laid her hand on his arm.

"Gary.  Gary look at me."  He started and stared down at her, at the tears shining up at him from her eyes.  "Call her back.  Tell her you will go.  There is nothing else to be done, you cannot help me anymore, not down here, and maybe--"

"Maybe nothing.  She would have had me thrown right back down here the moment she got her hands on it."

"But you could use it, Gary; you could get home.  Please, call her back."  Morgelyn started for the stairs.  "I will, if you do not--"

"No!"  Gary grabbed her arm and whirled her around to face him.  "You listen to me.  We are in this together.  In the time it would take to get the Dragon's Eye back from Father Ezekiel, if he'd even hand it over, they could--"  Shuddering, he dropped her arm and ran a hand through his hair.  "God, Morgelyn, he'd kill me on the spot for leaving you here with those--those animals.  At least we know now that he probably still has it, and hasn't told the others about it, and right now, that's the best news I can think of."  

"Then where is he?"  Arms crossed over her chest, Morgelyn gazed around the room as if she expected the priest to appear out of thin air.  "Why does he not come to our aid?  And where is Fergus?"

Why didn't she ask him something easy, like where the paper came from, or how they were going to find their way out through walls of solid stone?  "I don't know," Gary admitted, watching the light fade on the patch of moor he could see through the window.  "I just don't know."







Chapter 64

It could be witches
Some evil witches
--which is ridiculous
'cause witches
they were persecuted
Wicca good
and love the earth
and women power--
And I'll be over here.
          ~ Joss Whedon


"What are you saying, Marissa?  Are those Gar's initials?"

Marissa knew how confused Chuck was, how intensely curious Josh was, and how exasperated Betsy was becoming.  She could feel it all, those strong emotions churning around her, threatening to overwhelm her again.  And all she wanted was to hold the object of all this intensity and connect with Gary again, even if--even if--

She gulped and swallowed, her rational mind re-exerting itself.  She couldn't go unloading everything she believed, everything she felt, to a couple of strangers, no matter what their intentions.  There was a reason Gary didn't tell every nice person he met about the paper.

"I--"  She gulped in air, which seemed suddenly scarce.  "It could be a coincidence.  As Betsy said, those letters could mean anything."  It wasn't the truth, and she hid her consternation with herself by sipping at her coffee.  In the process of groping for her mug, she made sure that her fingers brushed Chuck's arm, trying to tell him that she needed to talk with him, that they needed to figure this out together.  

"Sure they could," Josh said slowly, but not as if he believed it.

Betsy sighed.  "Look, Josh, you know I'm as open-minded as they come, especially when it comes to your theories.  If the evidence is there, anything is possible.  But these letters couldn't possibly have been put here by someone in the Twentieth Century.  The carving's too old.  You know that--you're the antiquities expert."

Marissa schooled her features, hoping she could hide the tornado of fear and hope that was threatening to tear her apart.  It might be a leap of faith, but the conclusion she was ready to draw tugged at her heart with its very rightness.  "Do you know when they were carved?  Can you tell?"

"Not really," Betsy said.  "Two random letters don't give us enough context--just that they came later, from the looks of the craftsmanship."

"Or lack of it," added Josh.  "If we had it in the lab for a couple weeks, we might be able to analyze any micro-fragments that might be left in it."

Weeks?  Oh, no--Marissa opened her mouth to protest, but Chuck jumped in.

"I don't think that would be a good idea."

"But if we knew for sure--" Betsy began.

"It's just not possible right now."  Chuck's voice was curt and tight and left no promise of an explanation.  Marissa could have hugged him on the spot.  

"Well, okay then," Josh said in a placating tone.  "Maybe if we--"

"Does anybody need more Coke over here?"  

Patrick's voice chirruped in Marissa's ear, and she jumped.  Sometimes she could understand Gary's perpetual annoyance with the young man.  He always seemed to turn up in the wrong place at the wrong time...

The thought was too close to Gary's standard explanation; her hands started trembling again.  Pulling them into her lap and leaving the others to accept or decline Patrick's offer, she focused on stilling her fingers, on regulating her breathing, on holding on to the tenuous facade of normalcy by pushing possibilities away from the center of her thoughts.  She was too tired, too wound up, too overtaxed to think sensibly, to trust the leaps her heart was making.  There was one thought worth holding onto, and it was all that mattered right now.  No matter what she'd said, Gary's initials could not be a coincidence.  She refused to accept it.

Inhale, exhale, and listen.  

"And we've got potato skins in the kitchen if you're hungry.  They're great!  You can have onions, or cheese, or--"

"I don't think so," Chuck told Patrick.

"--bacon or sour cream or--"

"No, thanks," said Betsy.

"--mush...rooms...and...my...fav..."  Patrick's voice trailed off, but not because he had taken the hint.

A rush of cool air swept around Marissa's ankles, and she belatedly realized that the door had opened.  "Who's that?" she whispered to Chuck.

"It's Miss Gillespie!"  Patrick's gleeful declaration nearly brought up a giggle in Marissa's throat--bubbling amusement at his obvious crush tumbled through her, unsettling everything she'd tucked away just a few seconds ago.  What was Kelyn doing here, now?

"Gettin' kinda crowded in here," Chuck muttered.

"She was here a couple of days ago talking to--to Mr. Hobson.  Right before--"  Patrick's voice dropped down the scale from happiness to sorrow with a speed that only intensified Marissa's dizziness--then shot back up again.  "If you want her to wait I can talk to her," he added eagerly.  

"That's okay, Patrick."  Marissa got to her feet, heard chairs scraping out as the others did the same.

"Hello?  Uh, Miss Clark?"

"Hello Kelyn."  Marissa took a couple of steps away from the table.  She wasn't sure if she should make introductions, and decided to wait until she knew why the young woman had come.  

"I was hoping you'd be here."  In Kelyn's greeting, Marissa could hear--was it apprehension or excitement?  It was hard to tell over her own nerves.  She pushed her lips into a smile that she hoped was encouraging.  Behind her, Patrick was practically breathing down her neck.  "Maybe we should talk somewhere--else."

"It's all right," Marissa told her, long past caring who heard what.  "Why are you here?"

The young woman drew in a deep breath.  "I came because I found something.  After yesterday, at the library, I just felt so--so--well, I wanted to help.  Like Mr. Snow used to, and Mr. Hobson.  I knew that there had to be something I could do."  The girl talked like a runaway train.  "I really did tell Mr. Hobson everything I knew about--about that crystal ball thing, but then I thought maybe Dad would know something, something Grandma might have told him, so I called him.  He lives in Florida now and he told me to check Grandma's trunks, and there were the coolest things in there!  A flapper dress and lots of love letters and a hat and photos and--and this.  It looked so old, and some of the designs look like the bottom of the globe.  I know it's a long shot, but I just thought...well, here."

Something was pressed into Marissa's hand.  If it was a book, it certainly wasn't made out of paper.  The pages were made of something thicker than paper, more flexible, their edges worn and uneven.  They were bound clumsily with strong thread or twine of some kind.

"What the heck is that?" Chuck asked.

"I have no idea," Marissa told him dryly.  "Kelyn?"

But it was Betsy who was breathing down her neck now, and Betsy who answered.  "Oh my God.  Oh--oh my God.  You found this in your attic ?"

"Yes," Kelyn answered warily.  "Who are you?"

"Betsy Cooper, U of C archaeology.  I--may I see it?  Please?"

Marissa handed it over gladly, while Kelyn said, "Oh, I thought I'd seen you before.  I work at the library."

"You don't have anything like this at the Reg," Betsy said, choky and awed.  "Not even in rare books."  

"It doesn't look like much," Patrick said doubtfully.

"Hey, Coop--"  They were all in a little knot around Betsy, now, Marissa realized, and Josh's voice held a hint of amusement.  "You wanna let the rest of us in on it?"

Chuck's hand on her arm kept Marissa steady, for which she was more grateful than she could tell him at the moment.  "What exactly is it?" she asked, knowing he would understand.

"It's sort of a book.  It has these drawings of plants, and lotsa funny writing.  Looks like it was all done by hand."  Chuck didn't sound impressed.

"Some of it at the end is Latin," Kelyn added.  "I did recognize that much."

"First Gaelic, now Latin?  What's wrong with English?" Chuck wanted to know.

"Some of it is English."  Betsy's voice was reverent.  "But it's Middle English, so it wouldn't make much sense to you anyway, and some of it is Cornish and--oh, Josh, this is amazing.  It's--a herbal, it's..."  Her voice rose to a near-scream.  "Oh, my GOD ."

"She keeps saying that," Chuck muttered under his breath.

"Betsy?"  Marissa wanted to reach out and grab her by the shoulders, shake her and force her to explain.  "Josh?  Could one of you please tell us what's going on?"  But they were too wrapped up in the thrill of discovery to answer.

"It's in here, it has to be.  I knew I'd seen that verse somewhere..."

"Be careful with it!"

"It survived this long in a trunk in an attic, I don't think--oh, Josh, there it is, look."

"What?" Marissa, Chuck, and Kelyn asked in unison.

"Charles?"  Aunt Gracie's voice came from over near the kitchen door.  "What is it, is everyone all right?"

"I have no idea," Chuck told his aunt, deadpan.  Heels tapped toward them, followed by Crumb's heavier footsteps.  

"Marissa, dear, what's happened?"  Aunt Gracie touched her arm.  "You look as if you've seen a ghost."

"They weren't ghosts at all, they were real...oh...it's here.  There are no words for this, it's just amazing..." Betsy was well and truly babbling now, and Marissa couldn't keep track of what she was saying over the worried noises Kelyn was making and the hammering of her own heart.

"Fishman--"

"It's not my fault this time, Crumb, I swear.  I had nothing to do with it.  It was her--"

"What did I do?" Kelyn squeaked.

"You didn't do anything wrong, how could you?"  Patrick was trying to reassure Kelyn, but then Crumb cleared his throat.  

"Look, Quinn, don't you have something you need to be doing?"

"Uh--I'm gonna go make a fresh pot of coffee.  Emergency coffee," he stammered, and Marissa heard him knock over a chair on his way to the bar.

"Josh, please."  Marissa was nearly begging now, knowing that the young archaeologist had some sympathy for their plight.

His voice came in more clearly now, as the others quieted down.  "Yeah, sorry.  This is--it is the same, right, Bets?"

"Yes, oh, yes."

"It's the verse that's on your scrying glass," Josh told Marissa.  "It's in this book.  It looks like an herbal--a kind of book they had in the Middle Ages for identifying plants and their medicinal uses.  But part way through it...it changes.  The words are written in a different hand, they look like a story, and there's your verse.  The plant drawings change to Celtic knotwork, and there's a dragon on the same page as the verse."

"And it's--"  Betsy's breath was still ragged.  "It's original, right Josh?  These materials?"

"Near as I can tell.  You'd need lab tests to confirm it."

"Right.  Right.  I shouldn't just assume--but it is, I know it.  Do you understand what this means?"  Betsy's husky voice rose into its upper register, nearly squeaking.  "We're in a bar in downtown Chicago, looking at--holding--an original manuscript!  Not just any manuscript--this is the original, the very first, it has to be--of the manuscript of the Monk of St. Goron!  Do you believe this?"

At any other time, Marissa could have appreciated, could have even participated in, the pure thrill of discovery.  But now, like Chuck, who was practically vibrating with impatience beside her, all she wanted to know was what it meant to them.  To Gary.  

Unfortunately, she didn't know if there was going to be an answer to that any time soon.

"Gotta admit, though," Betsy mumbled, almost to herself, "it's an ironic name, considering he was excommunicated for writing this."

"I still don't understand," Kelyn said helplessly.  "Marissa, what are they talking about?"

Marissa lifted her shoulders and opened her mouth to admit she didn't know, but Josh spoke first.

"Bets, I know you're excited, but these nice people have no idea what's going on."

Betsy took a deep breath.  "This book, like all books of its time, was handmade--but this version is cruder than those we usually find.  For all we know, everyone made their own, but probably they didn't.  Most people didn't even know how to read.  Anyway, this monk from St. Goron's Monastery started writing about the plants, and then in the middle of the book he cuts off and starts a story, some local Cornish legend--"

"Cornish?" Crumb asked.  "Like those mini-hens they have at fancy restaurants?"

"From Cornwall, south of England.  That's where the monastery was.  Anyway, he added this story about a dragon, which includes the verse on your scrying glass.  And then--"  Marissa could hear the soft slap of turning pages.  "--then he added what most scholars think is a real story, about a woman who was burned at the stake for witchcraft--which was unusual in England, but this is down in Cornwall, and--"

"And they're right on the coast, so they get ideas from all over the world," Josh filled in.

"Right, right."  Betsy was moving around the little group, too excited, Marissa guessed, to stand still.  "Plus, you add in mob rule and anything can happen.  Of course it did--they thought she was a witch.  But this monk didn't agree.  He stuck in a paragraph--here--about healing plants being part of God's design, about nature being good.  The church, prigs that they were, couldn't handle it.  They excommunicated him for defending her, even though she'd already been executed.  We don't know his name or anything, but there were three or four copies of the book, all in his hand--at least, that's how many are still around.  At places like Oxford and Cambridge."  Betsy laughed, a gurgle of pure happiness.  "And all this time the original was in Chicago--with, I might add, a lot more text than what I've seen in the reproductions of the others.  Like this--Josh, take a look."

"She's on the last page," Kelyn told Marissa.  

"That's Latin," Josh said.

"Well, yeah, altar boy.  Even you should be able to figure this one out."

"In Memorium--Dormiunt in lux perpetua veritas...Rest in the light of eternal truth?"

"Yes, and the rest is from the Bible, from the book of Jeremiah--wait, I know this one: And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart."

There was a moment of silence, then: "I'd say this guy wasn't too happy about what happened," said Chuck.  

"Understatement of the year," Betsy told him.  "To make this kind of a statement in private would have been bad enough.  To make copies and circulate them--well, my guess is this guy didn't live long after they kicked him out of the boys' club."

Marissa's knees turned to water; she felt for a chair and sat down abruptly.  Was this monk the person who needed Gary's help?  

"Hey, you okay?" Crumb asked.  She nodded absently, still trying to focus on what Betsy was saying.

"But Josh, look, the handwriting's different in the first part of the book.  It's cruder, not as...the ink looks different, too.  I think--oh my gosh, someone else must have written the beginning, someone who knew the plants they were talking about and used some of them to make the inks, someone--"

"Someone who ended up accused of witchcraft because she knew how to do that?"

"I would bet money--oh, Josh, this was hers--a woman wrote this!  In the 1300s."  

Marissa's stomach lurched, and she clutched an arm over her abdomen.  A hand--Aunt Gracie's, she realized gratefully, rested lightly on her shoulder.

"When?" Kelyn squeaked.

"This last line is dated 1351.  Right after the plague."

Chuck must have finally caught some kind of hint about what Marissa was thinking, because his next question was laced with his trademark "what-the-heck-are-we-getting-into-this-time" trepidation.  "The Black Plague?  Rats and fleas and skin exploding into pustules and people dropping dead in the streets--that plague?"

"Charles."  Aunt Gracie spoke with her own quiet authority.  "That's quite enough."

"A lot of people thought it was the apocalypse," Josh said.  "Can you imagine losing half the population of Chicago in a few months?  People would go nuts.  I can see why they thought she was a witch."

"What--"  Marissa's throat was too dry, and she had to swallow before she could finish.  "What do you mean?"

Josh sat down in the chair next to her.  "No one back then really understood what was happening.  They didn't even have a name for it, the way we have AIDS or influenza.  They were so afraid, so suspicious--and then if this woman could read and write, and if she was a healer--she would have stood out.  And nothing she could have done would have stopped the Black Death."

Betsy's voice was quieter now as she drove Josh's point home.  "If you go around trying to cure the plague, you're not going to save everyone--possibly not anyone.  So sooner or later someone's going to get angry, start looking for someone to blame."  She sighed.  "No wonder they burned her at the stake."

"What a sad story," Marissa whispered, thinking, it wasn't the monk.  If anyone needed Gary's help, it would have been...oh...oh, no.

Smoke and fire.  Salve nos.  
 
"It sounds as if they were a people in great need of help," Aunt Gracie said.

"Hey, don't get so worked up."  Crumb sounded bewildered by their reactions.  "This was all hundreds of years ago."

Marissa reached out; her fingers made contact with the glass sphere.  "It's never too late for a miracle."

Aunt Gracie squeezed her shoulder.  "Quite right."

"But--" Chuck sputtered.  "But--the plague?"

"Hey, cool, you're studying the plague?"  Patrick's voice was loud enough to startle Marissa a second time.  "Did you know that 'Ring Around the Rosy' is all about that?  There were these red marks people would get on their skin and they'd keep flowers in their pockets to cover up the bad smell and they burned--"

Elbows on the table, Marissa covered her face with both hands.  She didn't want to think about that too closely, not if Gary--

"Yeah, we know," Josh said quietly, but some command in his voice brought Patrick up short--thank God, Marissa thought, but too late; the song was stuck in her head now.  She was too tired for this, too strung out to make sense of anything, let alone the crazy, irrational thoughts that were dancing around her brain.

"Miss Clark?  Is everything...are you okay?"

"Patrick, could I have a Coke or something?" Kelyn asked, and he hurried off to get it for her, so glad to help that he didn't even know he'd been given the brush off.  

"You're right, you know; this really is a miracle."  Betsy's enthusiasm was undiminished, if more contained.  "That this thing even survived at all, and ended up here--amazing."  She aimed her voice over Marissa's head, toward Kelyn.  "Look, I hardly know you, and I know you have no reason to trust me, but I would really love to study this.  Word for word, to get to know it.  We could test the paper and the inks, and my books are back at the lab and the lighting's so much better--I promise, we'll take good care of it.  I'll treat it like--like--"

"Like a book," Josh said wryly, "and with Betsy, that means she'll treat it like it was her own kid."

"I don't knooow..." said Kelyn, trailing out the last word.  "Marissa?  What do you think?"

Her fingers traced the base that held the crystal ball, around and around--

Ring around a rosy...

Things were starting to make the same warped kind of sense she'd had to accept two years ago, when Gary first told her about the paper.  This--whatever it was, it was her only connection to Gary, and it wasn't going anywhere.  But the book was another matter altogether.  "Chuck, you can see it, what do you--"

She was interrupted by Crumb's snort.  "This is some chain of command."  Aunt Gracie "tsk"'d at him.

"Chuck?"  Marissa wasn't just asking him about the book.  She wanted to know if he thought--if anyone else thought this was possible, or if she had finally and irrevocably gone around the bend.

"Well, it's not like I can make heads or tails out of it."

Marissa nodded, and Kelyn told Betsy, "Take it, then.  I want to know what it all means."

"How soon can you tell us anything?" Chuck asked.

"You think I'll sleep with this around?" Betsy chortled.  "How's tomorrow morning?  I have at least one book that talks about this manuscript, or what they knew about the copies--and I want to call Kate Mathers at Oxford, see what she has to say."

"If there's something in here that can help, Betsy can find it," Josh assured them.  "With your okay, I can pull some quick tests in the lab.  We'll let you know the second we figure anything out.  We'll just have to keep Dr. Hazor out of the lab, or he'll lock it in the safe and call out the Smithsonian."

"No way!" Betsy declared.  "This is mine--the discovery anyway--well, you know what I mean."

"Then take it.  Please.  I want--it was my grandmother's and it's part of our family, but for tonight, if Marissa trusts you--Mr. Hobson trusted me--"  Kelyn choked a little.  "I want to help his friends."

Betsy's voice was still bright, though she sounded confused by the reference to Gary.  "I'm not sure how you think this will help you with your friend, but it's amazing in its own right."

"Yeah, we kinda figured that out," Chuck drawled.

"Here you are!"  Patrick was suddenly there again, rattling a paper bag.  "A Coke for you, Miss Gillespie, and since it sounds like you guys are gonna be pulling an all-nighter--coffee to go, and food.  Mrs. Hobson cooked up a storm this morning--there's gnocchi and meatloaf sandwiches and brownies in the bag--on the house."

"Wow, first real meal all week," Josh said with a chuckle.  "Thanks!"

"Well, somebody's gotta eat it, and we're not open, and I--I know it's not much, but I want to help, too."

"That's really very kind," Kelyn said solemnly, and Marissa swore she could hear the heat rising in Patrick's cheeks.  She did hear him shuffling his feet.  For all Patrick's bad timing, he was a sweet kid, and Marissa decided she didn't care if he made Crumb cranky, or Gary pull his hair out--he was staying.  Here he was with no idea what was going on, but he jumped to do the first thoughtful thing he could, just because.  She liked him.

After all, it wasn't his fault that the "ashes, ashes" refrain reminded her of the taste left in her mouth after her dream.

Quick good-byes were said all around, and promises made to call, to treat Kelyn's book with care.  Josh shook Marissa's hand again, squeezing tight--like Patrick, he wasn't sure what was going on, but he was willing to help.  Maybe having faith wasn't such a lonely enterprise after all.

"I--I suppose I should go, too."  Kelyn sighed.  

"You don't have to!" Patrick told her.  "I have this leftover ice cream that's going to get freezer burn if we don't make milkshakes soon, and there's still plenty of food in the kitchen--do you like gnocchi?"

"I love it--but are you sure?"

"She made enough to feed an army.  Anybody else?"

"Not right now, Patrick, no."  The thought of eating Lois's food nearly made Marissa shake again.  She had to control her reactions.  Especially if she was right about what had happened to Gary...just approaching the idea made her dizzy.

The phone rang, and Crumb muttered, "Got it," and stomped over to the bar.  Chuck helped Aunt Gracie into the chair next to Marissa's.

"That's really cool, you finding that book like that.  What's it got to do with Mr. Hobson?" Patrick asked Kelyn as they walked toward the kitchen.

"You know what, give me a minute--I'll be back, I promise."  Marissa heard Kelyn move back toward her table, caught a whiff of the girl's lime shampoo as she sat down in the next chair.  "Marissa?"  

A deep breath, and Marissa found her voice.  "Thank you.  Kelyn, I can't thank you enough for what you've done."

"It's--what happened was close enough to being my fault that I had to do something."

"It isn't your fault.  If this is--if it has anything to do with what happened to Gary, then it must have been meant to happen."  

"That's--that's what I wanted to tell you--all of you, I guess, but you, Marissa, especially.  I know you didn't trust me, and it turns out you might have had a good reason, but--I just wanted to tell you--all of you--I think I know why this happened to him."

"To Gary," Chuck repeated flatly from across the table.

So it must be, for so it has been, time out of mind...

Marissa shook her head, but she couldn't dislodge the wispy trails of thought.

Kelyn sucked in a desperate breath, as if air were going out of style.  "Mr. Snow was a good man.  And if anything had happened to him, there were people who would have missed him.  We would have missed him.  But he--he didn't have friends like you.  If there's anything to this, if anything can--can bring Mr. Hobson back, I know you'll do it.  You're Anything-It-Takes Friends."  She said it in capital letters, and Marissa, too tired to control her reaction, felt her eyes brim up again.  Kelyn squeezed her hand.  "Whatever happens, he's lucky to have you guys."

She was gone before Marissa found a voice to respond, to thank her.  All she wanted to do was put her head down on the table and let go for a minute, just for a minute, to--she didn't know what, and she didn't have the energy left to figure it out.

"Geez," Chuck sighed.  "Out of the mouths of librarians."

"She's a very wise young woman," Aunt Gracie said softly.  "Marissa, dear, are you all right?"

She didn't answer at first.  She could hear them, but they were somewhere, a long way away, and she was tracing the metal lines of the knots at the base of the scrying glass, coming close, so close to understanding, to knowing what she already believed...

Ashes, ashes...

Chuck touched her hand.  "Marissa?  Tell me what's going on.  What exactly does this have to do with Gary?"

We all fall down...

"Not here," she mumbled, drawing the scrying glass into her lap with both hands.  It was unresponsive, cold and lifeless, but that didn't matter.  She knew, she was sure now, and it was just a matter of pulling herself together enough to explain it to Chuck--Chuck, who had taken the hint and was discussing dinner plans with his aunt.  Marissa slumped back in her chair, wrung out and boneless.

I am not resigned.






Feedback:  'Tis a consumation devoutly to be wished.   peregrin_anna@hotmail.com


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