Witch Water

“You’re kidding me?” she said, frowning. “You’re stealing this?”

“Yeah,” Fanshawe said, and without hesitating, he began to unscrew the tarnished globe off the Gazing Ball’s bizarrely inscribed pedestal. “I’ll explain later.”

“But—”

Fanshawe paused, irritated. “You in or out? Make up your mind.”

“Stew! I don’t know what’s going on!”

“Keep your voice down. I think your father’s at the tavern with his friends, but I can’t be positive.”

“What’s my father got to do with—”

Fanshawe glared at her in the moonlight.

“Like you said, what have a got to lose?” She chuckled to herself. “Okay.”

Fanshawe finally detached the ball from the pedestal. He handed it to Abbie. “Take that back to the car… carefully.”

By now Abbie didn’t even challenge her confusion, but when she took the globe… “Hey, this feels like it’s got something in it.”

“It does. Take it to the car.” Fanshawe leaned against the pedestal, then began to rock it back and forth until it dislodged from the ground. With a grunt, he hoisted it up.

Abbie stared at Fanshawe. “Come on, Stew. What’s in the globe?”

Fanshawe huffed, dragging the pedestal. “The ashes of Jacob Wraxall’s heart,” he replied and then trudged down the hill back toward the car.

Abbie, with her mouth hanging open, stood there for a while holding the ball.

Eventually, she followed Fanshawe.

««—»»

You will give to and take from the same, Fanshawe recited Letitia Rhodes’ strange prophesy as his shovel bit down into earth. He wondered if it was really true that they buried people six feet deep.

If so, he was in for some work.

When Abbie had seen what he was doing, she scurried away, either back to the car, or as far away from him as she could get.

Oh, well.

This was the second stop before his return to New York: the cemetery behind the community church. He dug at a gravestone which read GEORGE JEFFREYS RHODES.

“I will give to and take from the same,” he whispered aloud, digging. “Yeah, I guess I will…”

As it turned out, the coffin lid was uncovered beneath less than two feet of earth. It didn’t take very long for Fanshawe to unseat the tiny casket and take it back to the car.

All in a day’s work, he thought, thunking closed the Audi’s trunk. He wiped his hands off on torn, urine-damp Dolce & Gabbana slacks, then got back behind the wheel. Somehow, he wasn’t surprised to find Abbie in the passenger seat, looking shell-shocked. Can’t say that I blame her… He pulled away and drove off in darkness.

Not a word was spoken until they were on the freeway.

“I’ll explain everything in time,” he said.

She looked at him, mouth still hanging open.

“But let me ask you something. How do you feel about kids?”

“What?” she croaked.

At once, Fanshawe’s enthusiasm bubbled forth. There was so much of it. “And why should we beat around the bush? We’re not getting any younger, you know. Hell. Let’s get married,” and then he eyed her with intensity.

She looked like a mannequin in the dashlight. “Stew, I just watched you dig up Letitia’s Rhodes’ dead baby.”

“So?”

Abbie rubbed her face.

“I told you, I’ll explain all that,” he said. “But not now. You’re not ready for it yet—you’ve just got to trust me on this.”

She tried to say something but couldn’t.

“You want to know what this is all about? I’ll tell you. It’s about transposition. It’s about metamorphosis. We have the opportunity to shed our old skins and become the new us. It’s not much different from what you were saying before. Why should we force ourselves into society’s mold instead of being what we want to be in our hearts?”

Abbie paused in the ceaseless drone of tires over asphalt. “What are you in your heart, Stew? A warlock? Is that what this is? You want to be a warlock and you want me to be—what?—your sorceress?”

Fanshawe reflected. He’d never felt so wonderful in his life. “Like I said, I’ll explain everything when you’re ready.”

“This is crazy!” she exploded. “That’s got to be it—you’re insane, certifiably insane! You’ve got the trunk filled with a bunch of occult-looking shit I’ve never seen before, you tell me Jacob Wraxall’s ashes are in the Gazing Ball, then you dig up a dead baby and practically in the same breath you want to get married to a cokehead and have kids! Do you have any idea how crazy that sounds?”

Fanshawe remained calm behind the wheel. Several miles beyond the guardrail, the lights of a town dazzled. “Take this and look at that town,” he said. He handed her the looking-glass. “That’s how crazy I am.”

Outraged, Abbie recognized the glass. She put it to her eye and pointed it at the nighted town beyond.

And fainted.

I knew it. She’s got a black heart too. Just like me…

It was a comfortable thought.

Fanshawe smiled. He switched on the satellite radio and filled the car with a quiet violin concerto— Vivaldi, he suspected. Or maybe Corelli. Then he put on the cruise control, leaned back in the plush seat, and drove.

EPILOGUE

ONE YEAR LATER

Since he’d been a young child, Fanshawe had always admired Manhattan’s triangular Flatiron Building on Fifth Avenue, so after his first salvo of speculative stock market buys, he’d easily purchased the spectacular twenty- two-story monument as his own. This, he decided, would be his new home, on the entire top floor. In the cusp of unparalleled luxury was where he wanted his child to live and to learn.

Several chambers of that massive penthouse suite had been reserved for Fanshawe’s “research.”

Further market speculations had officially made him the wealthiest man in the world, in fact, exactly six months after his return to New York, which Fanshawe found not only satisfying but quite appropriate: six being the imperfect number and the emblem of his new Benefactor.

Abbie—if only temporarily—had overcome her cocaine addiction, not via rehab but more provocatively by