"I’m going to leave at nine thirty. I’ll get on the roof, find a place to hide, and wait for your signal. They’ll probably all attend the ritual. My best chance will be then, while they’re distracted."
"Agreed," Ashna said, looking up from the laptop screen. "I can follow their movements and let you know when they begin heading toward the chapel, assuming that’s where they’re going to do it."
“What better place?” I asked, picturing the scene. Despite my disbelief, I felt an atavistic aversion. The idea made me sick—Jutting in the center of the circle, mumbling some nonsense from an ancient book, surrounded by other old men, all hoping for some supernatural thrill, hungry for some measure of control over their own impending mortality. The power of ritual didn’t necessarily come from any real world result, but from the act itself—the regimented mobilization of bodies, the thrusting of normal people into liminal space, both mental and physical. I had no doubt that demons would fail to appear and do Jutting’s bidding. But the ceremony itself might serve to increase his power anyway by binding weak minds, convincing them via the hallowed smoke and mirrors of ritual stagecraft that they had experienced something numinous, caught a glimpse of the divine or the demonic. It had been working for charlatans like Jutting since the dawn of civilization, when people first discovered that power and wealth could be gained by claiming special access to the gods. The whole enterprise made me angry and stiffened my resolve to get the stolen notes back and the solution St. Martin had decoded, give it all to Wolhardt so he could claim the reward and sting Jutting, even if it was just a minor sting, a drop in the bucket considering the vast wealth he controlled.
Chapter 20
A Cold Bed
July 5: Powick
At nine fifteen I went upstairs and dressed in dark cargo pants, T-shirt, and a hoodie I had thrown into my backpack before we left. I emptied the rest of my stuff onto the bed and repacked only what I would need—supplies for various lock bypass methods, a length of rope, a knife, LED flashlight, a few gadgets that might come in handy.
Downstairs, Ashna was sitting at the kitchen table, watching a grainy video feed.
“I got into their security camera server. They only have four cameras for the whole building. Lobby, main entrance exterior, and two wide angles at the back. You can see the door here.” She pointed at a small door in the frame. It was the one near the fire escape I planned on using.
“Can you disable that one?”
“I can do better. Look, they’re on servos so you can pan.” She showed me a control on the screen. “I’m going to slowly inch it this way bit by bit until the fire escape isn’t in the field of view anymore.”
“Perfect.”
“Don’t get killed, asshole,” Ashna said and punched my shoulder.
“I’ll do my best,” I replied, trying to sound lighthearted but not feeling it.
I left via the patio doors at the rear of the model home, slipping out onto a terrace, crossing dry lawn, and vaulting a low wall into the neighboring yard. In that manner, I moved through the unoccupied subdivision, passing windows that looked in on empty rooms, crossing well-kept yards. A damp chill rose from the earth as the last of the day’s heat dissipated into the evening air. It felt good to be alone, walking at night. I always thought too much, spent too much time obsessing over details. When I finally started moving I was able to clear my head and exist in the moment. At last I reached the crumbled edge where suburb met farmland. Between the two, I found a rough no man’s land—a shallow ditch where tall weeds grew. The moon, amber colored and shaped like a broken button, hung high in the sky. By its light, I crept along the far side of the ditch, keeping my eye on the looming shape of the asylum, solid black against the star-dotted black of the sky. I followed the border, enjoying the scent of fecund soil as I crossed along a fallow field, then a field planted in juvenile sugar beets. The smell of those beets took me back to my childhood on the farm for a moment, memories rolling by like a jerky old movie. Not a happy time. A time I gritted my teeth and got through. A time I didn’t like to remember. I turned the projector off by pure force of will and focused on the task at hand. Another fifteen minutes and I came slowly around to the rear of the old asylum.
A stone wall about eight feet high enclosed the grounds. I climbed to the top and crouched on the pitted cement coping, surveying the building. Lights shone from several windows in the east wing and also glowed through the tall, thin slivers of stained glass at the rear of the chapel. I stayed there for several minutes, watching. I could see the rear door but there was a dark corner where the west wing met the main building and a tall tree blocked out the moon’s light. I kept watching, distrustful. My eyes did the tricks that eyes do in the dark—seeking movement and pattern and making it up out of nothing if it wasn’t forthcoming. Finally, though, I
