Waking the Moon

I shoved past her into the room and raced from one window to the next, yanking each open and leaning out, desperately scanning the night for what I needed to see: Angelica and Oliver laughing together as they walked back up to the lodge.

But instead there was only darkness, the sweeping shadows of me mountains and a few faint stars blinking wanly beneath the sickle moon. I pulled my head away from the open casement and stared at Annie. My breast ached with fear and hopeless longing, a palpable throbbing pain as acute as though I had been stabbed.

“She’s gone.”

“Gone? What do you mean, gone?”

“I mean I don’t know where she is.” I went from the window to Angelica’s bed and stared down at the neat worn coverlet, her bulging cosmetics bag, the little case that held her contact lens solution.

She won’t get far, Sheriff. She rode off without her eyeliner.

“You don’t know where she is?” Annie’s voice rose to a hysterical pitch. “Jesus! What happened—”

Through the open windows came a sudden high wailing. It grew louder and louder, perfect counterpoint to my anguished thoughts. Crimson light streaked the trees, strobing from red to black to red.

“No!” I ran into the hall, but Annie stopped me.

“Sweeney, what happened? You have to tell me, you can’t just take off like this—where is she?”

“I don’t know!” I yelled. “She took off! Something—something happened, something with her and Oliver —”

“Drugs? Was it drugs?”

“No, it wasn’t drugs, I wish it was drugs! Angelica split and Oliver, he tried to—he—”

“Goddamn it!” Annie tore across the room to her bed and started throwing clothes into a knapsack. “I knew it, I knew I should have gone with you.” The ambulance’s siren went dead, although its ghoulish light show continued. “Where’s my stuff? Did you do something with my other bag? Oh, god, why’d I stay here—”

Grief and fear exploded inside me. “Christ, Annie, what do you think you could have done? Some kind of, of witchcraft, what could you have done about that! These people are crazy; Angelica is crazy and you think you could have stopped her?”

“I would have stopped her! I would never have let her go—”

“There was nothing you could have done.”

We whirled to face the door. There stood Balthazar Warnick, one delicate hand resting upon the wooden jamb. On his forehead a vein throbbed, and he brushed distractedly at it, as though it were a fly. His sweater was covered with dirt and leaves and blood.

“You shouldn’t have interfered,” he added wearily; though I was unsure if he was talking to me, or Annie, or himself. “Katherine Cassidy, I want you to come with me.”

I stiffened. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Professor Warnick shook his head. “No one will hurt you. We’re sending you back to the city, that’s all.”

“Why can’t we stay here?” Annie’s voice cracked and she clutched her knapsack protectively to her chest. “Why can’t we leave in the morning?”

“You can leave in the morning with the others. Miss Cassidy has to leave now.”

“Why?” I started to cry. I hated myself but couldn’t help it. “What’s going on? Where’s Oliver—”

“They’re taking him to the hospital. I think he’s all right, just a bad cut although he did lose some blood.” He ran his hand across the front of his sweater and winced. “Come on, Katherine. Pack your things.”

“No. I’m not going with you.”

“Do yourself a favor,” snapped a nasal voice, and Francis Connelly loomed behind Balthazar. He looked more shaken than I would have expected, but his eyes were cold. “Just shut up and come with us, okay?”

“Francis.” Professor Warnick turned to him angrily. “It’s under control. I told you to go to the hospital—”

“But it looks like—”

“I will meet you there,” Professor Warnick went on smoothly, but his voice had a dangerous edge. Francis stared at him, as though waiting for him to change his mind, finally nodded, and shot me a last disdainful glance. When he was gone Balthazar looked at me sorrowfully.

“Sweeney.” He’d never called me that before; his tone was so gentle that my silent tears gave way to sobs. “You have to come with me.”

“What are you doing?” Annie flung her arm protectively around my shoulders. In her too-long Snoopy T-shirt she looked like a kid fighting bedtime. “You can’t just take her—”

Professor Warnick sighed. “We’ve found drug paraphernalia in Miss Cassidy’s dorm room. Marijuana, some kind of mushrooms—”

“Hey! You didn’t have—” said Annie, but I cut her off.

“You were in my room? Who let you in my room—”

“I don’t believe it!” yelled Annie. “This is a setup, it’s a fucking—”

“I have a responsibility to the University,” Balthazar said coolly. “The penalty for drug possession is mandatory expulsion.”

“Expulsion!”

His voice rose impatiently. “Consider yourself fortunate, Miss Cassidy! We could call the police.”

“But—you didn’t have a warrant! Isn’t there some kind of appeal, can’t I—”

“There’s also the matter of missed classes—I haven’t seen you in my class for over a month, and there have been complaints from your other teachers as well.

“I think,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder and starting to steer me toward the door, “I think that it will be best for all concerned if you are removed from the University immediately. We could have you arrested, you know: it wouldn’t be at all difficult to obtain a search warrant. But at the Divine we prefer to deal with these things in our own way. You have had an unfortunate influence on some very promising students, Miss Cassidy. Enough is enough.” He pushed me into the hall.

“You bastard. Where the hell are you taking her?” I looked over my shoulder to see Annie staring after me in a rage.

Balthazar Warnick shook his head. “I’m sorry, Annie. It’s not just that she broke school policy. Drug possession is against the law—”

“The law! This has nothing to do with the law, and you know it, you—”

Professor Warnick pulled the door shut behind us.

“Are you going to expel her, too?” I demanded. “Are you going to expel everyone who’s here tonight?”

“Not unless they interfere.” Balthazar Warnick tugged at a greying forelock. He was breathing heavily, and his face was flushed. “Katherine Cassidy. Come with me, please.”

His hand shot into his trouser pocket and withdrew an old-fashioned key ring.

“Where are we going?”

He said nothing, only kept his hand on my shoulder and guided me down the corridor, up a small flight of stairs and through a narrow hall, up another stairway and finally into a wide passage carpeted with thick oriental rugs woven in somber hues of black and crimson. We were in a part of the Orphic Lodge I’d never seen. The sounds of urgent voices died. I could hear nothing but our echoing footsteps and the falsely cheerful jangle of Professor Warnick’s keys.

“This way, if you will.”

Professor Warnick dropped his hand and walked briskly down the hall. I walked beside him, resigned to whatever horror was in store for me. It seemed futile to try to run. And in truth, at that moment I was more afraid of being alone than of anything else. There was something about the passage that reminded me of that darkly ornate upstairs corridor at Garvey House: the same queer aura of readiness and neglect, the same brooding