Witch Water

forced abstinence. Fanshawe had locked her in a posh, luxury-stuffed room and kept her there until the birth of their son three months ago. The love he’d felt for her early on—like most things pertaining to human relationships—had moldered as quickly as a dog turd in the sun.

When he wasn’t touching base with his multiple companies, he pursued his new and wondrous calling with unrestrained zeal: following in the alchemical and occult-scientific footsteps of Jacob Wraxall. And as for his impoverished, pitiful obsessions of old? Those paltry urges no longer existed. He had far more crucial things to do now, things which excited him exponentially more than peering at woman in windows.

He’d mounted the Bridle in the building’s center court, whose security and privacy he’d seen to at tremendous (but now inconsequential) expense. Jaunts back into the past, however, were no longer needed, and the miraculous Bridle’s inscribed orb no longer contained the ashes of Wraxall’s heart. Those ashes were now kept in a memorial urn mounted in the bedroom.

Instead, the orb contained the ashes of the heart of one George Jeffreys Rhodes. With this instance, luck had accompanied Fanshawe, along with Mrs. Anstruther’s information that Letitia Rhodes’ unfortunate baby had been embalmed with town donations—hence, the infant’s heart had not decomposed. Thanks to the intricacies of the first of the Two Secrets, Fanshawe was able to transplant himself selectively into the future rather than the past. The limits of this occult traversement was seventy-one years—the life span that would otherwise have been enjoyed by Letitia Rhodes’ son. It took some rather strenuous mental conditioning, meditation, and certain “oblations” (Fanshawe thrilled in reducing New York’s homeless population), but after only a few weeks of this, Fanshawe found that he had received the blessing he’d asked for, just as Wraxall had said he would.

When his heart felt the blackest, he pushed himself forward.

Six months ahead was enough, and then only five minutes in the public library was all it took. He’d gone online, looked up the year’s best low-to-high earners on the Dow and NASDAQ, and returned to his own time with enough data to make billions on the marketplace. He knew that as he honed his talents (and further conditioned the blackness of his heart) his reconnaissance surveys would take him more and more distantly into the time ahead of him. Indeed, he would amass more riches than any man in history.

Lucifer, be praised, he thought.

««—»»

“It never gets old,” Abbie said in a hush. Midnight had tolled minutes ago, when Abbie had taken her usual place at their huge bedroom window twenty-two stories up. She was scanning the guts of Manhattan (back when it was not called Manhattan but instead the Isle of Manna-Hatta by the Wappinger Indians) with one of the looking- glasses. She was utterly engrossed.

“What’s that?” Fanshawe said, not quite hearing her. He closed the door behind him.

“The view. It’s just so spell-binding, I never get tired of it. It never gets old.”

IT doesn’t but YOU do. He walked up behind her and gazed out into the nighted city with his naked eyes, watching the dazzle of millions of lights and millions of people; yet knowing that what she saw was equally beautiful in an opposite way. He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Which glass are you using?”

“Evanore’s—it’s my favorite. To think that New York City looked like that in the 1670s.”

“I know. It’s incredible.” And YOU, my dear, are an incredible waste of space. Fanshawe learned quickly that “love” was just another mode of passing fancy. After the baby had been born, she’d served her purpose. She’d become wine gone stale.

The bowl of cocaine next to her was nearly gone, while it had been half-full this afternoon. Fanshawe didn’t care about it now; he’d only cared that she be off the dope during her term, to protect the baby.

But now?

She can snort a pound of that shit every damn day for all I care. In fact, I HOPE she does. He knew he’d be intrigued to watch her incrementally wither to nothing. She was halfway there already.

“The Mothersole glass is pretty awesome too—it goes back fifty years earlier than Evanore’s. Remind me and I’ll bring it out tomorrow,” but this was just so much idle talk. He looked at her from behind. What’s she down to now? A hundred pounds? Ninety-five? The unrestrained plunge back into her addiction had turned her arms to pasta-colored broomsticks; her breasts had lost half their girth. Her face was a skin-covered mask.

She paused, raised a solid-platinum spoon to her nose, and snorted. Then she took to looking through the glass again.

Fanshawe smiled.

They’d never actually been married; in fact, no one even knew she was here. And as for Mr. Baxter and any trouble he might make?

Fanshawe had envisioned the potency of his calling without delay, and then he’d made certain arrangements with certain persons amenable to the discharge of certain enterprises in exchange, of course, for a previously agreed-upon fee. Within a week of Fanshawe’s taking Abbie to New York, Baxter, Monty, Howard, and that asshole in the Yankees shirt had tragically perished in a fiery car accident.

Money talked, and Fanshawe had developed a big mouth.

Dr. Marsha Tilton, too, had met with a regrettable mishap, in her own parking garage, no less. Similar persons had introduced themselves to the astute psychiatrist, and after hauling her into a van and ra—

Well, what more need be said? Fanshawe simply didn’t like the idea that she knew so much about his embarrassing past.

On the other hand, Letitia Rhodes must’ve realized that Fanshawe had been the mysterious hand-of-charity that had paid off her property taxes; therefore, she would make the same deduction once the annual million dollars were wired into her account. He felt a distinct kinship there, and, It’s the least I can do, considering what I took from her…

He stood a while longer watching Abbie stare enraptured through the glass. Between that and the cocaine, she couldn’t have been more content.

“I’ve got some work to do now,” Fanshawe said.

“Goodnight, honey,” she murmured. She just kept staring out the glass.

Fanshawe left the room.

Perfect…

««—»»

From the east balcony, he gazed out into the glorious night. What he saw in the stars were promises that couldn’t be measured…

Later, he raised one of the looking-glasses to his eye and watched Madison Square Park disappear and be replaced by dark, tree-crowned hills and dirt-scratch trading trails which would later emerge as Fifth Avenue, Greenwich Street, Broadway. Torches flickered on those trails just now, as Dutch settlers armed with blunderbuss rifles guarded a caravan of merchant wagons. Fanshawe heard distant drums beating—tom-toms—from the remaining pockets of obstinate Indians. Periodic shrieks shot out (war cries?), and low, rhythmic chants. But farther north, where Gramercy Park would one day spread, the log-hewn walls of Peter Stuyvesant’s essential first settlement came into focus, campfires burning bright.

It’s all history, he thought. And I get to see it.

Lately, he’d been thinking. Since he’d brought Abbie to New York, Fanshawe hadn’t once traveled out of the country or even out of the city: his apprenticeship was too important. But now that he was grasping the Art of Deviltry with confidence, the idea of travel excited him. Rome, London, Athens, Hong Kong? Naturally, he’d bring some of the looking-glasses with him, to see those great cities as they’d been three centuries ago. And with his money and connections?