Waking the Moon (52 page)

Angelica had laughed softly, drawing her hand away and leaning forward to kiss the top of his head. “No, sweetie—
you
do.”

She pursed her lips, tracing the edge of the frame with a fingernail. It had been Hasel’s destiny to the for Othiym. She leaned forward to blow a little thread of ash from the burning sage, then pushed aside Hasel’s picture, moved several others where she could see them better. Frames of heavy darkened silver; frames of real tortoiseshell and delicate coral. Within them were more photographs: faded Polaroids, amber-tinted Kodachrome, crisp black-and white.

Mostly they were pictures of Dylan and her late husband, taken during her long Mediterranean exile. But here was her beloved uncle, at his villa near Poggibonsi, and there was her father, and there her beautiful cousin Rafael—her first cousin, twice-removed, ah! he had been so handsome, she was truly sad when he died—and here was another of poor sweet Hasel.

And one of Annie Harmon, taken by Angelica herself during one of their afternoon interludes. Annie looking very cross but also rather stunned, her worn old quilt pulled up around her breasts. And here was the young Sweeney Cassidy—not caught
in flagranti delicto
like Hasel or Annie, but looking quite gamine with her cowboy boots and cropped hair. And here was a more recent picture of Annie, clipped from an issue of the
Advocate
and stuck in the corner of a large framed picture of Dylan’s graduation.

“Come here, you,” murmured Angelica. Gingerly she teased the newspaper photo of Annie from the frame. She had been focusing all her will on Annie lately. She did not dare confront Annie as she had Hasel—Annie was another woman, after all, and had a better understanding of Angelica’s true nature. She would be wary of a meeting with Angelica.

And rightfully so!
Angelica thought, her mouth curving in a smile. But even Annie Harmony could not escape the naphaïm. She took Annie’s photo in one hand, and with the other picked up the lunula. For a moment a pang of real sorrow made Angelica’s eyes fill with tears.

Because while each sacrifice was holy, and each one made her stronger and stronger still, it was only those who had
loved
her who made the Goddess real, who made Her epiphany complete.
That
was the bridge between the worlds of Othiym and Angelica di Rienzi Furiano—a bridge formed of all those who had truly loved her, those who had died for her over the centuries. And for each of them she had wept, as she had wept for Hasel and Rafael and Oliver; as she would weep for Annie, and Dylan. As Ishtar, Au-Set, Isis, Artemis or Cybele, as the thuggees’ Kali or Wilde’s Salome, she had always received a tribute of souls—and blood. The bridegroom who lay with her but one night a year, and died before sunrise; the man who served as her consort for twelve lunar cycles and then was slain within her sacred grove. Even in modern times her ancient worship was not utterly forgotten. All those nineteenth-century artists who had painted her as sphinx and panther and vampire sensed the truth of it: Woman was a perilous country.

Angelica blinked her tears back, and ruefully smiled. In the tarnished mirror nestling between the photos, her reflection smiled back. Oh, men had feared her then, and women too—they had always feared her! But they had
loved
her as well, and perished for her willingly.

And so they would again. And each death, each loving offering, would be another stone in the bridge that swept from Angelica to the Queen of Heaven. Already she had received so many, nameless men and boys. But then there had been Hasel, an ardent sacrifice if ever there was one. And Oliver …

Her heart beat too fast, thinking of Oliver. She forced herself to stare at Annie’s photo again, Annie with her freckles and her cowlick and her soft white skin. Tonight, perhaps, Angelica would finally see Annie again. When the Goddess came to her, when Othiym would
be
her. And someday soon, she would see Dylan, too, would cradle him within her as she had all those millions of others …

She took another deep breath, the scent of coriander and sage making her think of temples made of clay and earth and dung, of malachite and mammoth ivory. She raised her head to stare at the swollen globe in the eastern sky.

“For I so love the world that I will give unto You my only Son,” she whispered.

With Dylan’s death it would be done. Her epiphany would be complete: Othiym would awaken from her aeons-long sleep.

I am wife and mother and sister of Osiris

I am mother of Horus

I am She that riseth in the Dog Star

I am she that is called Goddess by women!

For me was the city of Bubastis built

For me was raised the City on the Hill

I divided the earth from heaven

I put the stars in their courses

With me doth true justice prevail!

I am the Queen of rivers and winds and the sea

I am the Queen of war

I am Queen of the thunderbolt

I raise the sea and I calm it

I am Queen of the storm

I overcome Fate

I am the secret mouth of the world

I am the word not spoken

Othiym haïyo, Othiym Lunarsa!

Her words faded into the plaintive strains of the string quartet. Her reverie ended when the telephone chimed. Angelica smiled, that would be Dylan, calling to tell her how his first day at the museum had gone.

“Hello?”

“Angelica?”

A woman’s disembodied voice rang hollowly from the speaker. Not Dylan after all but Elspeth, her agent, calling from New York. Angelica heard traffic noises in the background: she’d be on her car phone. “I’m sorry to call so late, but there’s been some trouble.”

Angelica’s heart stopped. “Dylan? Is he all right? What—”

“He’s fine, Angelica. It’s not him, it’s—”

A pause. “Last night. A bunch of your girls were at some kind of party at an abandoned house in Cape Cod. Some big gay hangout on the beach up there. I just saw it on the news. A boy was murdered, a bunch of kids found the body and—”

“Who was it?”

“They don’t know, the body was so mutilated—”

“No! The girls, which girls?”

Elspeth’s voice rose edgily. “I have no idea, Angelica. But the way they described it, I’m certain—”

Angelica twisted her pen between her fingers, heedless of the ink spilling from its seams to stain her nails peacock blue. “Did they bring any of them in for questioning?”

“No, of course not.” Elspeth gave a sharp laugh. She had been one of Angelica’s earliest initiates, and was now at the center of a Circle in Manhattan’s publishing district. “But they did note similarities between this death and that boy in Lubbock.
And
the New York
Beacon
mentioned Cloud.”

“Cloud’s death was a—a
horrible
accident.” Angelica let her voice catch, so Elspeth could hear how the memory still upset her.

“This kid’s death was a pretty bad accident too,” Elspeth said dryly. “Apparently the body was so mutilated they had to use dental records to identify him.” Another pause. “Do you know someone named Annie Harmony?”

Angelica was silent. “Did you hear me?” Elspeth asked after a moment.

“Yes, I heard you,” said Angelica carefully. “I knew someone named Annie
Harmon.
She was my roommate for a semester at college. Why?”

“Well, someone named Annie Harmony may have seen what happened. She’s a singer with a big gay following; my son says she’s on cable all the time. She did a show in Provincetown last night and according to the club’s owner there were a number of your girls in the audience, he said they disrupted her encore and she was pretty pissed off. Afterward she apparently went to this party and saw something.”

Angelica’s voice was tight. “Did she go to the police?”

“No. But I guess she’s enough of a local celebrity that the news is all over the place—she was hysterical, screaming about black angels and some woman who saved her. Now the police want her for questioning but she’s disappeared.”

Annie!
She couldn’t lose Annie, not now! Not after so long—

“Angelica?” Elspeth’s voice came through in an angry burst of static. “Are you listening?”

“Of course—it’s just, well, a
surprise,
that’s all.”

Elspeth snorted. “Yes, I would say a murder in the middle of a crowded party is a pretty big surprise! Pretty careless, too—a lot of people noticed your girls and boys there, and even though the gay press is trying to make this out to be some kind of queer-bashing, the local media
and
the national news are talking about ritual murder. They’re talking covens, they’re talking witches, Satanic rites …”

Angelica finally gave in to exasperation. “Well, let them talk. Remember Freedom of Religion, Elspeth? Remember the Santeria decision?”

The distorted scream of a bus’s brakes tore through the room. “This isn’t about freedom of
religion,
Angelica! This is ritual
murder
—”

“One man’s mass murder is another man’s high mass, Elspeth. If they summoned the naphaïm no one will find anything.” Her fingers drummed at the phone’s speaker. “I’m expecting a call from my son—”

“Maybe you can suggest to everyone that they cut back on the Circles for a few weeks—”

“Elspeth, I’m not their Mother Superior—there are women all over the world acting on their own now! You know what it’s like—all those splinter groups. I couldn’t possibly contact them all.”

Elspeth’s voice rang out warningly. “This is
really
bad timing, Angelica! You have a new book out, and the tabloids
love
this kind of stuff, especially in the middle of summer—tomorrow it’ll be on ‘A Current Affair’ and then you’ll have Laurie Cabot and NPR and everyone else in the country shoving microphones in your face!”

“It won’t be a problem, Elspeth.” Angelica’s voice was disarmingly calm. “All right?”

For a moment she heard only the drone of traffic, and faint music rising from the radio behind her. Finally Elspeth said, “I just thought you should know. Whether or not they can prove anything, the media and the public are starting to link these murders—”

“Offerings,
Elspeth,
offerings,”
Angelica said gently.

“—to link these
offerings,
with
your
name. Your publisher is
not
happy about this
at all,
not one little bit.”

Angelica reached for the disconnect button. “Thank you for letting me know, Elspeth. I have to go now.”

For a few minutes she sat at her desk, staring at the moon outside. It was high above the cliffs now, its light falling in a shimmering curtain to cover everything, stones and tiles and pool, the twisted limbs of yucca and ocotillo and huisache.

“Four more weeks,” she said softly, and picked up the lunula. It had grown so heavy over the last few months. It drew strength from the waxing moon; as the moon waned, the offerings made by her followers would fatten it once more, until a month from now it would be heavy as though it had been wreathed with the tiny carven images that had been buried with the bodies of the faithful so many centuries before. By then Dylan would have found the missing crescent, the little moon’s lost dark quarter. The lunula and its Mistress would be whole again at last.

Now she felt the gravid curve heavy upon her breast. She ran her fingers across it, thinking of her beautiful son playing in the waves. She began to recite softly to herself, his favorite bedtime verse.

They dined on mince and slices of quince

Which they ate with a runcible spoon

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand

They danced by the light of the Moon, the Moon, the Moon:

They danced by the light of the Moon.

Very early the next morning, Annie Harmon sat on the tiny balcony of the room she and Helen had rented at a B&B in Wilmington, Vermont. To the west stretched the Green Mountains, their peaks gilded with sunrise. Above Haystack Mountain the moon was poised to set, just a few hours past its full. Phoebes and titmice sang from birch trees in the yard below, and from Lake Whittingham echoed the wailing of a loon and its mate’s anguished reply.

“We’ll have to let Vicki and Ed know if we want the room for another night,” Helen said gently She took her coffee cup from the breakfast tray that had been left outside their door. “It’s the Fourth of July weekend; they’ll want to rent it to someone else.”

Annie continued to stare at the western sky. She’d showered seven times since she and Helen had fled the rave on Herring Cove Beach, trying to rid herself of the smell and taste and feel of blood. Now her skin felt as though it had been rubbed with sand, so raw and sore it hurt to move.

“Annie?”

“I can’t go on with the tour.”

“You have to, Annie.” Helen’s voice was soft but annoyed; in the last twenty-four hours they’d had this conversation fifty times, at least. “You’ll be in breach of contract, besides which we still haven’t paid the mortgage—”

“There’s money in my private savings account in Burlington. I’ll write you a withdrawal; take it and pay all the bills.”

“You have a private savings account?” Helen sounded aggrieved. “You never told me.”

“Now you know.”

“But
why!
I mean, aren’t you going with me?”

“I can’t. I can’t go on with this tour, and I can’t go back home with you. I told you, it’s too dangerous.”

“Dammit, Annie, why don’t you just go to the police! This is ridiculous, you can’t just—”

“The police won’t be able to help me. The police won’t be able to help
anyone
if this keeps up …”

“And you can?” Helen asked incredulously.

“No, I’m sure I can’t. But maybe—maybe I can think of someone who can.”

“Who? Your mystery woman back in Provincetown? All of a sudden you’ve got to run off and play Sherlock Holmes?”

“Helen, you
know
that’s not what I’m doing.”

“So tell me what you’re doing.”

“I can’t.”

“Always a fucking mystery. Always the fucking heroine,” Helen fumed, gulping her coffee.