Mark of the Witch (23 page)

“No. No, I’m not all right at all. I don’t believe for one
minute Jon would’ve taken his own life.”

“No, I’ve been thinking the same thing. But what I can’t figure
out is why the demon would want to hurt him when he was just about to give me
the incantation that would allow me to retrieve the amulet. That’s what he
wants, isn’t it?”

“We don’t know for sure that’s what he translated.”

“I’m sure,” I told him. “I felt it in my gut as soon as you got
off the phone with him this morning. And not just the spell we need, but more.
The truth I must remember.
God, Tomas, you don’t
know how badly I want to read that part.”

“I know. It might have answered all your questions.”

“And maybe shown me what the hell I’m supposed to do.”

He frowned. “You mean…with the amulet?”

I nodded firmly and held his eyes, and I’m pretty sure my
newfound inner strength was beaming from mine. “Yes, Tomas, that’s what I mean.
I’ve seen the face of this so-called demon. It’s pain-racked and tormented. And
I’ve heard the voice of my…my sister from that long-ago lifetime, commanding
me—pleading with me, even—to help him. All that is pulling me in one direction.
And then I’ve got you pulling me in the other. You, a man I once loved and who
I’m starting to love again…”

He blinked hard when I said that, even flinched a little, but
otherwise he stood still and kept listening.

“…but also a man I’m pretty sure helped to murder me, a man who
chose his religion over his love for me. And at your side, pulling your strings
like a puppeteer, there was—and maybe still is—an old priest I trust less than
I’d trust a black widow not to bite.”

I shook my head slowly. “I gotta tell you, Tomas, my feelings
for you are the only thing coming down on your side in this. Everything else,
including my own gut, is telling me to help the demon.”

He sighed, lowering his head. “Thank you for being honest with
me about that.”

“What are you going to do, Tomas?” I searched his face. “What
are you going to do if I decide to help him instead of you and Father Dom?”

He dropped his gaze. “I don’t know.”

That hurt. I wanted him to say he would respect my judgment,
let me make my own choice and protect me from Dom when I did. But no. Instead I
got an “I don’t know.” Which in my mind translated as “maybe kill you
again.”

That’s not what he said,
dumb-ass.

No. He didn’t say anything, really. Even
though I just basically told the idiot that I’m falling in love with
him.

I had to turn away from his eyes, because they saw too much in
me and I didn’t want him spotting the hurt. This wasn’t the time for this,
anyway. We were close to something. I felt it. I started to pace away from him,
one hand sliding along the railing, when I glimpsed something on the floor below
us and came to an unsteady halt.

“Oh, my God.”

“What is it?” Tomas walked quickly to where I stood, trying to
follow my gaze. “Do you see something?”

I nodded, opening my journal to the page where I’d drawn the
intricate medallion shape. I pointed at it, then at the red carpet far below
us.

The same shape was right there. Right there on the carpet.

“But…but that’s just a shadow.” Tomas turned, and I did, too.
“See? The light is pouring through that window, angling downward so it passes
through the railing—” He turned again, his finger tracing the path of the
sunlight to the metal rail with its twisting patterns. “The railing is what’s
causing the shape. It’s just a shadow, Indy.”

“Maybe so, but it’s identical to my drawing.”

He looked at the book, looked at the floor. I heard the
shoes-on-metal sound of Rayne crossing the catwalk. Clearly she’d seen us
pointing and was coming to investigate, and a few seconds later she was looking
over my shoulder at the sketch and then at the shadow on the floor.

“That’s amazing,” she said. “And even more so when you stop to
think that if we’d been here an hour earlier or later, we’d never have seen
it.”

“Just like the tree,” I whispered. “The men were right there,
ready to remove that branch. If we’d been even a few minutes later, it would
have been gone.”

She nodded slowly. “You’re channeling. The Goddess is guiding
you with a steady hand, Indy. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“Neither have I,” Tomas admitted. “You’re amazing.”

I warmed at his praise and tried not to show it. “Let’s get
down there.” I closed my hand around his. It was an impulse. I did it without
stopping to think and was about to pull it away when he squeezed and kept my
hand right there.

“Come on. What are we looking for next?” he asked.

“A dark doorway behind the medallion design,” I said. “There
should be a statue near it.” I turned the page and revealed the next drawing
even as we were hurrying down the stairs to the shadow on the floor, still
holding hands, with Rayne right behind us.

The place had only a handful of people in it. Students, maybe,
or professors, visitors, researchers, who the hell knew? Ignoring them all, the
three of us walked to the center of the medallion-shadow and stood there looking
around.

But there was no dark doorway. “It should be just above the
curlicue in the medallion,” I said pointing it out in my sketch. “Just to the
left of the clock.”

“There’s no doorway there,” Rayne said, pointing, then jerking
her hand down to her side again with a quick look around to see if anyone had
noticed our touristlike enthusiasm. We did
not
want
to draw attention. “Just the clock and the statue.”

I looked back at my drawing. Why was everything there but the
door? Suddenly Tomas swore under his breath, and my eyes shot to his.
“What?”

“The time, Indy. Look at the time.”

I looked at the clock again. “Ten after five? God, have we
really been wandering the campus looking for clues for two hours? Father Dom’s
going to think we abandoned him.”

“But look at the time,” he said, tapping my book, and I looked
where his finger was. I’d drawn the exact same time that showed on the clock
right now. The hands on my drawing were at precisely five and ten. But instead
of feeling excited by yet another validation of my powers, I felt a little sick
to my stomach. This was getting surreal.

“But there’s no doorway,” Rayne said. “Just the statue.”

The three of us moved toward what turned out to be a bust of a
man, Andrew Dickson White, Cornell’s cofounder and first president, and the man
for whom this part of the library was named. Tomas looked behind the bust, even
ran his hand over the wall, and shook his head.

I lowered my own in abject disappointment, and then froze.
“Tomas, the floor,” I whispered.

He looked where I was looking. The plush red carpet was solid
everywhere else, but there was a break, a seam in the shape of a large
rectangle, around the pedestal on which the bust rested. As if there were a
doorway under it, in the floor itself.

“Could this be it?” Tomas looked at me.

I nodded. It was. I felt it right to the roots of my hair.

“Then there must be a way to open it,” he whispered.

I turned the page in my journal. But I was all out of drawings,
except for the one of my “treasure chest” at home. And then I looked at the bust
itself.

Rayne nodded at me. “That’s it, Indy. Use your inner eye. Try
to see it through the eyes of magic, the Eyes of Spirit.”

“Come on, Rayne. You and I both know the Eyes of Spirit are
transferred as part of the third initiation. I haven’t even had my first
yet.”

“The Goddess gives the power, Indy. We only hold a ritual to
acknowledge and honor it. The power is already there. You’ve been a witch for
more than three thousand years. I have no doubt you made it to the Third Degree
during at least one of those lifetimes. Maybe all of them.”

I lifted my head and looked into her eyes. What I saw there was
absolute belief—in
me.
Then I looked from her to her
brother, and he was gazing at me with something even more powerful. Something I
didn’t dare analyze.

But it filled me with belief. A belief stronger than any I’d
had before.

I stepped back several feet and stared at the bust,
deliberately allowing my eyes to go blurry as I opened my energy pathways. I
didn’t look directly at the statue, just let it fade and relaxed my mind.

The man’s face was wise, with crow’s feet at the corners of his
eyes. He had a full beard and an impressive mustache. Folds of fabric made of
white stone draped from his neck over the lapels of a stone suit jacket and a
loop of twisted cord. It was all part of the bust and all made of the same white
stone. But that loop seemed, in my eyes, to glow.

“People are starting to stare,” Tomas whispered.

I lowered my head, blinking my eyes clear, and wandered over to
a nearby shelf to pretend to peruse the titles there.

Tomas and Rayne were beside me in seconds. “Well?” Rayne
asked.

“It’s in that piece of the bust that looks like a loop of cord.
There’s a switch or a lever or something. But how are we going to try this in
broad daylight with all these people around?”

Tomas looked over his shoulder, then back at me. “Return by
night? After hours?”

“No,” Rayne said. “With the bombing, and now what happened to
Professor Yates, security here is going to be tight. And we sure as hell don’t
want to upset any nervous cops on the hunt for terrorists.”

“Then what?” I asked.

Rayne met my eyes. “You two find the restrooms, duck inside and
wait five minutes. I’ve got this. Meet me back at the boulder when you’re done.
I’ll catch up with Dom there and set his mind at ease.”

“What are you going to do?” Tomas asked, looking worried.

She leaned up and kissed her brother on the nose. “Just trust
me. See you later.”

And she turned and hurried across the red carpet, and within
seconds she was gone.

Tomas looked at me and shrugged. “I think I saw some restrooms
before. Come on.”

He led me back through the stacks and out of the reading room,
wandering in what I was sure were random directions before stopping right in
front of a pair of restrooms. “It shouldn’t be long,” he said, with a glance at
his watch.

He looked back at me, and then impulsively leaned down and
kissed me quickly on the mouth before ducking through the gender-appropriate
door.

I blinked away my nervous smile and followed suit.

Moments later the fire alarm went off. I closed my eyes and
said, “Lady Rayne, you’re a freakin’ genius.”

Only minutes later we were back in the A. D. White Room,
standing alone in front of the bust. The library was even more mysterious and
awe-inspiring now that it was entirely devoid of patrons.

Tomas put both hands on my shoulders, as if to lend me his
strength, as I reached out to touch that loop of twisted cord on Mr. White’s
vestments. I ran my fingers over the cool, bumpy shape of it, pushed and pulled
on it, but it didn’t move.

Of course it didn’t move. It’s stone!

But I kept trying, until my forefinger slid off the cord and
into the circle at the center of the loop, and something clicked. Suddenly the
entire bust, marble pedestal and all, began to move. I jumped backward, landing
flush against Tomas’s chest, and his arms closed around me, holding me there. It
was sexy as hell, and I wanted nothing more than to turn and look up into his
eyes, maybe see passion starting to simmer there. But I couldn’t take my eyes
off the statue.

The pedestal rose slightly, maybe an inch, shoved upward as
part of the floor also rose directly beneath it, then swung to the side,
pivoting on one corner. Beneath it, a stairway spiraled downward into absolute
blackness.

15

“W
hat I wouldn’t give for a flashlight,”
Tomas whispered.

“There’s an app for that.”

He looked at me with a puzzled frown as I pulled out my
BlackBerry and turned on its LED light. It wasn’t as bright as a real
flashlight, of course, but it would do in a pinch. And we were definitely in a
pinch. I held it out in front of me and started down the steep metal staircase.
The steps were narrow, but surprisingly solid for as old as they had to be. Even
so, they wobbled just enough to make me uneasy, and they made enough noise to
wake the dead.

Tomas stopped behind me and called out in a harsh whisper,
“Hold up a sec. Turn that light this way.”

I did, and in a moment he took it from me, exploring the
underside of the floor surrounding the door until he found what he was looking
for. He touched something, and the floor above us moved itself back into place,
lowered itself and blocked out the world.

We were alone. Utterly alone, in absolute silence. The only
sounds came from the two of us, our breathing and, in my ears, the pounding of
my heart. He looked at me, and I at him. How long had I been waiting for a
moment like this, a moment of absolute privacy with him?

And yet, I couldn’t indulge myself in fantasizing about what
would happen if I leaned up and kissed him just then. This was too
important.

God, I was sounding just like him. But I was feeling more and
more as if I had been born for a reason. I’d been given powers, a connection to
the other side, for a reason. And the reason had to do with this so-called
demon—and with my own murder so many lifetimes ago.

A murder in which my beloved Tomas had been my killer. My
executioner. It didn’t seem possible.

Sighing, I turned away from him, taking my phone with me.
Aiming its light ahead of me, I started moving down the noisy stairs again. I
saw nothing beyond the meager reach of the light. Only blackness. Our steps
echoed and creaked and clanked. I hoped to the gods we reached the bottom before
the firefighters arrived to answer Rayne’s fake alarm, though I knew the chances
of them hearing us were slim. The air felt cool but surprisingly dry on my face,
and I could smell earth and rock and soon…books.

Yes, books. That unmistakable aroma of ink and paper and
bindings. The same smell that had permeated the rooms above. It was, I realized,
one of the best smells on the planet. Books.

The stairs seemed to go on and on, and we just kept descending,
but finally they ended at a flat stone floor. I held my light up, shone it
around us, revealing a series of archways forming a circle around the base of
the stairs, which had ended dead center. Five arches, I realized, each one with
a symbol over the top.

“They’re the Aristotelian symbols for the elements,” I
whispered. I’d learned about them in my studies of the Craft of the Wise. I
highlighted each of them with my light as I spoke. “Earth,” I said, aiming the
beam at an inverted triangle with a line crossing through it. Then I shifted to
the next archway, marked by the same symbol, only with the point upright, for
Air, followed by the symbols for Fire, Water and Spirit over the remaining
archways.

“So which way do we go?”

“I don’t even know what we’re looking for, Tomas.”

“Information from the past. About a demon.”

“Information would be Air. But the past, that might be Water.
Demons are definitely spirit, though. Or maybe Earth…or…”

“Can’t you…you know, use your…powers?”

I met his dark eyes and felt the same stirring in my belly that
I always felt when our eyes met. It was like connecting to a current when we
touched gazes. Or lips.

As I stared at him and forgot everything else, I said, “Truth.
We’re seeking truth. That’s fire.” And I knew I was right. I moved toward the
archway with the simple upright triangle. “This way.”

He took hold of my hand. “Stay close, Indy. I’m feeling very
antsy down here. I’m not sure it’s safe.”

I let him clasp my hand in his, relishing his touch, his
protective attitude, his caring. “I feel safe with you, Tomas.”

“I can’t imagine why,” he said softly, and I realized we were
both still whispering, even though we had to be far out of earshot of anyone.
Anywhere. This place, though, like the library above, resonated with a sacred
energy, and it was that energy we were responding to with our respectful tones.
Dark stone walls surrounded us, and combined with the stone floor to ensure that
every footfall, every word, echoed.

Even our whispers.

I stepped beneath the fire arch and stopped, staring into the
darkness beyond. I lifted my BlackBerry and aimed its beam ahead of me. It did
little good. The light only reached a few feet.

“I’m sorry, Indy.” I could tell from his voice that Tomas was
close behind me. “I’m so sorry for what I did, the part I played in the
past.”

I stopped, my entire focus on those words, and a response
spilled from my lips without me even knowing what I was about to say. It just
came out. “I told you to do it. I begged you to do it, Tomas.” I blinked, as
surprised by the words as his gasp indicated he apparently was, but at the same
time knowing I’d spoken the absolute truth.

I turned and stared into his eyes, lit from the glow of my
phone. “You…you remember that?” he asked.

Searching my mind, I realized that I did. “It just bubbled up
out of me like some underground spring finally finding a path to the surface.
You didn’t want to do it, even though you knew you’d be punished, maybe even
executed, if you refused. They didn’t know about us—the powers that be, the high
priest. They would have killed you, too, if you’d refused. And I would have died
anyway. I couldn’t have borne it if you died, too.”

“You loved me that much,” he whispered.

Tears were burning in my eyes. The emotions of another
lifetime, the heartbreak, bursting forth again, as fresh and sharp as if they
were brand-new. “You loved me enough to condemn yourself to die with me. I
couldn’t let you.”

“God help me, I should have,” he whispered. “The memory feels
so real to me, so present. Not like something that happened three thousand years
ago, but like something that’s alive right now.”

“I know.” My words caught in my throat. I had to take a breath,
swallow to relax the muscles enough to go on. “It feels the same way to me.”

He stared into my eyes and gently brushed my hair away from my
face with one hand. His mouth was close to mine, so close that his breath fanned
my lips, warm and soft. Something felt like raging waters, rising and pounding
against the walls of my heart from within, swelling it and trying to break
through. I fought to hold my feelings in, but I knew somewhere inside that it
was a battle I could not win. Nor even keep fighting for very long.

“Tomas,” I whispered.

His mouth closed over mine, and he held me hard against him,
our bodies practically melding. I felt him shudder as my fingers twined in his
hair and his arms closed even tighter around me. One hand moved upward to cup
the back of my head as he bent over me, feeding from my lips like a hummingbird
feeds from a lily, and we turned like dancers as we kissed.

And then there was a sound, like stone scraping over stone,
echoing all around. We pulled apart only a little. Our lips stopped mating, but
his arms stayed around me as we both searched for what was making that dark,
deep sound.

Some of the stones in the domed ceiling were moving, and light
came spilling through from somewhere beyond them, filling the room. I tried to
peer into that light, knowing it couldn’t be coming directly from the sun, since
we were down far too deep in the earth—that stairway had been endless. And yet
what looked like natural light beamed, from five equally spaced openings,
forming a circle enclosed in the larger circle of the domed ceiling itself.

“It must be some kind of mirror system,” Tomas said. “We must
have triggered it when we stepped through the arch.”

“And look, five again. Five points inside a circle. Just like a
pentacle.” I drew my eyes away from the light and looked around the newly bright
room. It was lined with shelves, which were in turn lined with books. Moving to
the nearest one, I touched a spine with great reverence, gently pulling the
volume from its spot. The cover was very old, the lettering on it foreign to
me.

Tomas walked up and looked over my shoulder at the cover.
“That’s Hebrew. This is
The Lesser Key of Solomon the
King.
”

“Ceremonial magicians use the rites in this book,” I said and
stopped. Then I jumped in headfirst. “For summoning angels and demons.”

“We’re in the right place, then.” He scanned the rest of the
books, his eyes eager and sharp. There were perhaps a thousand titles, or at
least that was my best guess. “But how do we even know where to begin?”

I walked around the room slowly, my gaze moving up and down the
shelves. The books’ spines were all illuminated now, but none of them seemed to
jump out at me any more than the rest.

And then I paused. Because one high shelf held something that
wasn’t a book at all. It was a small wooden chest, with a rounded top and a
small antique iron lock dangling on the front.

I stopped in front of it, staring, my heart tripping over
itself in surprise. It was my chest, or its twin, anyway. “Whatever it is, it’s
in that box,” I told him.

“How do you know?” he asked, coming to stand close beside
me.

“Because I have one that looks exactly like it. Not old or
anything. A replica. Cheap. I bought it at a flea market years ago. I was never
sure why I liked it, but I did. It’s where I keep all my magical supplies.”

He nodded.

“Can you get it down for me, Tomas? I can’t reach.”

Standing on tiptoe, he was able to just reach the bottom of the
chest. He inched it out over the edge of the shelf with his fingertips, and then
farther, until its own weight tipped it forward into his waiting hands.

The chest was about two feet wide and maybe eighteen inches
high at the top of its arching lid. Mine was maybe a third its size. He carried
it to the center of the floor and set it down. “The next thing is to get it
open.” He tugged experimentally on the lock, an ancient-looking iron padlock
without any keyhole. “It’s solid. It’s not going to give.”

“Then we’ll have to take the whole thing with us.”

He looked up at me and swallowed hard. “It’s going to be hard
enough to get out of here undetected, Indy. The firefighters will have declared
the library safe by now. People will have come back in. We can’t exactly come
popping up out of a hidden passage beneath a statue carrying a stolen artifact
from a hidden sublevel.”

“Then we may be stuck here until after hours. Maybe we can
sneak out in the dead of night without drawing too much notice.”

His lips pulled tight at that notion. “I don’t like leaving
Rayne out there with no one but Dom to protect her. She’s too close to all
this.”

I looked at him, looked at the box, looked at the light shining
down around us. “Maybe there’s another way out.” My eyes were back on that box
again. It felt as if it was pulling me to it. I was itching to get at
it—alone.

Why don’t I want him here when I open
it?

It didn’t matter why. My gut had led me true so far, I had to
go with it. “Tomas, why don’t you take a look around, see if you can find
another exit? I can take a closer look at this box while you do.”

He studied me for a moment, tipping his head slightly to one
side before apparently making up his mind. “Okay. Yell if you need me. I won’t
go far.”

“All right.” I held up my BlackBerry. “Take this. You might
need it.”

“Thanks.” His hand brushed mine as he took the phone from me
and our eyes met, and his beamed something into mine. It felt like tenderness.
Like…more.

I watched him walk away, then sat down with the box in front of
me, turning it this way and that, and examining it all over. Its sides were
smooth wood, broken only by the metal-lined seam of the lid. Metal bands divided
the lid into thirds, black iron and clearly old. The lock on the front was
intricate, decorated with embossed swirls and vines. And then I tipped the box
onto its back and caught my breath.

The underside was painted—and brightly, too. There was a
black-and-white grid, like a tic-tac-toe board, with gold borders and colorful
symbols in each square. Nine of them, and one more at the head of the board.

I touched that lone symbol, the most familiar one—the Eye of
Horus, with its curlicue eyeliner and vacant stare—drawing my fingers over its
smooth surface.

And it lit up.

I caught my breath, jerking my hand away. I heard a rumbling
sound then, either around me or inside me, I wasn’t sure which. I pressed one
hand to the floor, looking up in fear of the room collapsing around me, but the
rumbling died slowly away.

Okay, okay, something is definitely up
here.
I stared at the glowing eye for a full minute, as it slowly
faded and finally blinked out again.

Then I studied the other symbols, and I realized what they
were. They came from the major arcana of the Tarot. Death. The Hanged Man. The
Lovers. The Hierophant. The Tower. The Magician. The High Priestess. The World.
The Empress.

As I studied them, I knew what I had to do. The cards were like
chapters of the story of my past life. Perhaps if I touched them in the right
order…

What was I first? Not a lover, a witch.

Rayne’s words echoed in my mind.
You’ve
been a witch for more than three thousand years.
Okay, then. First,
the High Priestess. She sat on a throne between black and white pillars, the
crescent moon at her feet, a sacred scroll in her arms.

I touched her.

She lit up.