Andromeda Klein (39 page)

Stick him with the kitten pin
, said Huggy, bubbling up from under the sound of the suddenly heavy rain on the roof. But Andromeda found she didn’t feel like it.

“All I mean,” continued Byron, unaware of how narrow his escape from the pin had been, “is that if there is something to be figured out, it’s all in there, somewhere. Otherwise there would be no point in even trying to figure it out, it would just be random. But I’m not even talking about that right now. What I’m saying is, if the kneeling Two of Swords with the what’s it called, the gibbulous moon and the low tide is a date, it’s
before
Daisy’s death. September twenty-ninth or thirtieth.” He consulted his notes. “She died on October third. So that would be the Three of Swords, not the Two. Right?”

But Andromeda was shaking her head. “I don’t think tarot is ever
that
precise.”

“I’m not talking about the damn tarot,” said Byron, “I’m talking about your weird, weedgie head. I just think that somewhere in there you must know something about that date without knowing you know it. Like your own mind is trying to tell you something.”

“Okay, fine,” said Andromeda. “It’s something to do with Daisy. Great.”

The Precious Sponge shrugged. “At least I got something out of the deal,” he said. It took Andromeda a moment to realize he was talking about the ear kiss.

“Yes, that makes the whole thing totally worth it,” she said. “Now focus. Significator.”

The Precious Sponge shuffled through the cards.

“Okay, so it’s not here,” he said. “The Lovers. Not in the deck.”

Andromeda didn’t believe him, but it was true. She counted only seventy-one cards, and the Lovers was not among them. The Daisy deck that had been hidden in
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female
was missing a card. Had this screwed up all the readings she had done with this deck? But it was even worse than that: it had screwed up only some of those readings.

As Andromeda had guessed, the police, who might well have only been selling raffle tickets or something, had spooked the dad, who had fled in his van and was probably camping out in the woods, preparing for the apocalypse or lying low till the “heat” was off.

“Happy now?” said the mom.

Yes, Mother, that was in fact my plan all along, Andromeda silently responded. The mom was the one who should be accused of being happy, if anyone should. She was the one who disliked him most.

“Why didn’t you answer the door and take care of it?” asked Andromeda.

“Why didn’t
you?”

“Because, parental figure, I’m the daughter. You’re the supposed adult. It’s your house. I just live here.”

“You know how uncomfortable I am around police, Andromeda,” said the mom. “Would it kill you to think of someone other than yourself every once in a while?”

Uncomfortable around police? The alleged daughter of the supposed head of the Australian FBI? It was yet another one Andromeda had not heard before.

xx.

Turning Byron loose in the International House of Book-cakes while she did her shift was one of the best ideas Andromeda had ever had. It was like having a roving secretary or research assistant.

“Just find out some stuff,” she said, handing him the Sylvester Mouse list. And off he went, eager to please. He would bob in and out of the stacks, paging through indexes and bibliographies and augmenting his searches with queries on his ever-present Internet phone.

Within the first hour he found two interesting things.

The first was the source of Daisy’s Toad Bone Ritual, a book on rural folklore of the British Isles shelved in the 900s, so it had not been on Andromeda’s radar. The only person who had ever checked it out since it was added to the collection in 1967 e.v. was named Sam Hellerman. That would have been Sam from the Old Folks Home, no doubt, this text being the basis for the awkward Choronzon song about the Toad Bone Ritual. So that was his last name, Andromeda thought. Sam HELL-erman. Strangely fitting. But Daisy’s notes, like Sam Hellerman’s song, included several phrases from the book verbatim, and the pages in question had the telltale pinpricks in the margin.

“She must have taken her notes in the library,” said Andromeda, trying to remember if she had ever noticed Daisy hanging around the 900s.

“Either that,” Byron said, “or she was a secret Chronzon groupie or something.” He paused. “So, did Twice Holy Daisy Wasserstrom have any horses that needed taming?”

“It had lots of other uses besides that, I’m sure,” said Andromeda. “Like I said, it’s powerful but negative magic. Crowley did a variation of it as his initiation to the grade of Magus.”

“This Crowley was kind of psycho, wasn’t he?”

“He was a hell of a holy guru,” replied Andromeda, matter-of-factly, “but yes, he had his unsavory aspects. Anyhow, I can’t see Daisy going down to the river.”

“She copied it down,” said Byron.

“Well, so did you,” Andromeda replied, pointing to his notes. If people were held responsible for everything they copied down, magic and homework would be in big trouble.

“Okay, but now check this one out,” said Byron. “Prepare to be amazed. Did you know that in the Golden Dawn, every initiated magician got a secret code name in Latin?”

“Not a ‘code name,’ really,” Andromeda replied. “They used Latin mottoes for their magic names. I have one too:
Soror Imperfecta.”

“What’s my magic name, then?”

How do you say “Precious Sponge” in Latin? Andromeda thought. Huggy? But out loud she said: “I’m still working on it.”

Byron opened a large book on the Rosicrucians and pointed to a sentence in it. “You really should work on your Latin,” he said.

Under the Precious Sponge’s finger it said:
Sacramentum Regis
.

“Not ‘the King of Sacramento.’ That’s fucked-up, totally backassward Latin. It’s actually ‘the Sacrament of the King.’”

“Sacrament of the King,” said Andromeda. “What does that even mean?”

“No idea. But stop hassling me about that. Just look at who it is,” said Byron.

Andromeda read the name, A. E. Waite, and shrieked.

“Easy, girl,” said Byron. “It’s okay, she just found out she won the lottery,” he said to an elderly patron who appeared to be engaged in a struggle to remember how to turn on his phone so he could call the proper authorities.

Well
, said Huggy, drifting in on a wave of heating-duct noise,
you have been invoking him several times a day ever since you were twelve
.

“A.E.,” said Andromeda.

Exactly
.

“So you mean to tell me,” said Andromeda Klein, “that A. E. Waite hangs around the astral plane just waiting to give tricksy hints about tarot readings to anyone who happens to come by?”

“Not anyone,” said Byron. “Just you.”

Andromeda made an exasperated noise. “No, not you. I was talking to Huggy.” Byron rolled his eyes.

No
, said Huggy,
I don’t mean to tell you anything of the kind. I just said you invoke him a lot, and you do have a bit of a fortune-telling problem
.

“So the King of Sacramento is A.E.”

No, how could he possibly be?

Andromeda made a noise that is often written as “Arrrgh!”

“Can I talk now?” said Byron. “Thanks. Maybe he could be
Waite’s
H
GA
.”

Did that make sense? Andromeda couldn’t even tell anymore.

I got kissed by A. E. Waite, Andromeda Klein said to herself. I got kissed by A. E. Waite. What did it matter whether it was strictly true or not? She just liked saying it.

The Precious Sponge’s little monkey hand was waving in front of her face. Gematria, he was saying. We should check the gematria. Like he knew what he was doing. “What were the King of Sacramento’s numbers?”

Andromeda was staring into space.

“Tell Huggy to give you the dream numbers,” said Byron.

Wow, a medium and a scholar
, said Huggy.
You better step it up, Klein. Soon he’ll have no use for you
.

For what it was worth, Byron was able to find variations on A.E.’s name that added up to two of the King of Sac ramento’s four numbers, using Agrippa’s values for Latin gematria.

“Wow, that’s semi-impressive,” he said, but he was clearly hooked on gematria all the same. “Obviously, you had read about A.E.’s Golden Dawn name and had it somewhere in your mind all along, so that must have been why you dreamt of it, even though you heard it wrong. And then … and then your psycho math mind added it up….” He opened Agrippa again and began more trial-and-error scribbling, clearly looking for ways to confirm the remaining numbers.

It’s close enough for astral work
, said Huggy.

That night Andromeda managed through sheer will to force herself into what she used to term the King of Sacramento’s chamber, but it was the most unsatisfying box sleep she had ever had. The King never arrived. Her bonds and fittings were creaky and unsatisfyingly loose. And there was an old-fashioned telephone jangling and vibrating on top of her box that her annoyingly unbound hand still couldn’t manage to reach.

She woke up and realized she had overslept and that Rosalie was calling her cell.

“Whatever you do,” Rosalie said, “do
not
come to school today. Do
not.”
Andromeda heard the beep of the Gimpala’s horn through the phone’s speaker and from the street outside, and waved to Rosalie through the window to come on up.

Andromeda hadn’t realized she still had the sword in her hand and the goggles on top of her head till she noticed Rosalie’s wide-eyed look of astonishment after she had opened the door.

“My sleeping sword,” Andromeda said matter-of-factly.

“Where’s Mom?” said Rosalie as she sat at the kitchen table, coffee mug in hand, phone out, as though ready to scan for updates.

Andromeda explained that the mom was probably looking for the dad, who had been in hiding ever since the police had come calling the previous day.

“Just as well,” said Rosalie. But they were probably looking for
you
, actually. See, here’s the deal….” Rosalie paused. “Could you, like, put that down or something? It’s a little distracting.”

Andromeda laid the sword across the table and leaned forward, cupping her ears, ready to listen.

According to Rosalie, Mizmac had in fact received an overdue notice for a book checked out on Daisy’s library card. The title of that particular book,
The Satanic Bible
, struck terror into her newly reconverted Community Bible Center heart.
(Why in Malkuth would you try to save
that
?
said Huggy, bleeding through the sound of the coffeemaker. Andromeda had no answer besides: completeness.)

A further check of library records had revealed that more than forty books with similarly terrifying titles had been checked out on the same card, and it hadn’t been difficult to guess that Andromeda Klein, Daisy’s old strange, perverted sidekick who worked at the library, might have had something to do with it. That was, arguably, a kind of fraud, but more importantly, Mizmac had considered it to be harassment and religious persecution. A search of Den’s room revealed pornographic materials, which Den had confessed had been furnished by one Andromeda Klein.
Hereafter to be known as the Defendant
, said Huggy.

“Pornographic materials,” said Andromeda. “They’ve got to be kidding. They were snowboarding and motorcycle magazines. More or less.”

“Community standards, Drama Llama,” said Rosalie. “And don’t let the DDR fool you. They’re very into the whole ‘right versus wrong’ thing these days.” Andromeda thought of the Thing with Two Heads and shuddered.

In any case,
pornographic materials
was what it apparently said on the complaint section of the petition for a restraining order that Mizmac had filed against Andromeda Klein. The sheriff’s department was trying to locate her to serve her the restraining order papers. Meanwhile, the school’s policy was to investigate every “sex offense” accusation in cooperation with local police. It was in the course of this incipient investigation that the Defendant’s English teacher, one Mr. Daniel Barnes, submitted to authorities a notebook containing bizarre materials, the products of a disturbed mind, that had been turned in as assignments. They included Satanic symbols and several unsettling drawings of burning buildings and towers, calling to mind the horrible series of fires and explosions throughout the city, said by some to have been the result of methamphetamine laboratory mishaps but considered, in at least one case, to be the work of arsonists or even terrorists.

“Not to mention,” Rosalie continued, with an enthusiasm almost akin to enjoyment, “some of your twisted poetry. Did you really write a poem about shooting teachers in the head and flushing their bodies down the toilet?”

“It’s a children’s song from when my dad was little! He taught it to me.”

“I’m on your team, Andromeda, don’t get me wrong. I’m sure there’s a perfectly legitimable explanation. But they take threats against teachers very seriously around here. Well, the teachers do, for sure. Did your dad really put out a record with detailed instructions on how to build a bomb out of a lightbulb? Well, I hear they want to talk to him about that, too. You can tell me the truth, Andromeda. Did you set those fires? Or are you a meth dealer?”