An Affair Of Sorcerers

April had rolled down her window and given the other man a dollar. The light changed, and I stepped on the accelerator.

'What do you hear from your brother?' I asked.

April, who'd been looking back, sighed and turned around to the front. 'Nothing. I think he's spoken to Dr. Greene on the phone to ask after Kathy, but I haven't seen or spoken to him since you saw the two of us together at the hospital.' She pointed out the window to the dirty summer streets. 'I know he hasn't gone home. He's somewhere out. . there.'

'Oh, you bet he is. My brother tells me Daniel's scaring hell out of every warlock in the city. What's he doing out there, April? What does he think he can accomplish?'

'The same thing you're doing,' she said softly. 'He's trying to help Kathy.'

'Then why won't he cooperate with the police? Or with me?'

'I told you: he has to do things his own way.'

'Membership,' I said quietly.

'Excuse me?'

'Nothing. I was just talking to myself.'

I turned left on The Bowery, the quintessential 'skid row'-a thoroughfare of dead dreams, drunks and wholesale appliance and lighting stores. The Bowery is the catch basin for the city's human dregs. This street is as far into the spiritual sewer as the drunks can flow. Having resisted the best ministrations of everyone from the toughest troops of the Salvation Army to flying squadrons of social workers, they are tended to in soup kitchens and flophouses, but, for the most part, left alone in their special circle of hell, like bits of human garbage moldering in the wind, snow, sun and rain, apathetically waiting for death. Those men who'd begun cleaning windows early-or who'd had some coins left from the day before-were already sprawled on the sidewalk, or huddled in doorways drinking death disguised as bottles in brown-paper bags. Of late, they'd been joined by a new breed of derelict: hopeless, wild-eyed crazies dumped on the streets under New York State's new 'enlightened' program of releasing the mentally ill from the hospitals and returning them to 'neighborhood care.'

It was a bad place to be looking for a friend.

Farrell Street was narrow and litter-strewn, bounded on both sides by gutted, decaying buildings. I parked in front of the address Garth had given me; it was a rotting hulk that looked a month or so away from disintegration. April asked if she could come along, but I insisted that she stay in the car. I locked the car doors, then went up to the entrance.

The front door of the building was half off its hinges. I pushed it to one side, stepped over an unconscious drunk and walked down a hallway that reeked of urine and garbage. The door to Bobby Weiss's apartment was locked, but a terrible stench emanated from the room on the other side. I knew what I was going to find even before I went in. The lock broke easily; I pushed open the door and entered.

The floor of the room was littered with glassine envelopes and needle-works. Bobby Weiss/Harley Davidson was out, and he wouldn't be back. He'd left his half-naked body behind, a dirty needle stuck in its thigh, on the filthy bathroom floor. From the smell, I judged that he'd been dead at least two days.

The odor wasn't helping my stomach any. I put a handkerchief over my mouth and nose and began looking around the apartment. There wasn't much to look at; Bobby had apparently hocked most of his possessions during the course of his addiction, or had simply left them behind in the string of places where he'd flopped.

There was one thing he hadn't been able to pawn, and it occupied a place on top of a stained orange crate next to a bed with grease-stained sheets.

The book had been put together with skill and great care, with inscribed metal covers and leather thongs for binding.

My stomach muscles fluttered as I opened the metal cover and began to leaf through the book. There were about thirty pages; the writing at the beginning was neat and concise-the handwriting of the Bobby Weiss who'd been one of my students. The last twenty pages were almost totally illegible, obviously scrawled under the influence of heavy drugs. But there was more than enough in the first few pages to tell me that I'd stumbled over much more than I'd expected to find.

I felt wounded and very tired as I put the heavy book under my arm and walked from the room. I was leaving behind the wasted body of a boy who, to judge by the strange manuscript he'd authored, had been shot by invisible bullets of superstition; Bobby had exploded under their impact, plunged from the rarefied atmosphere of celebrity to end as a cold, gray hulk, like a falling star.

My thumb throbbed painfully, a not-so-gentle reminder that the same gunsights were undoubtedly being lined up on me.

Chapter 12

'Is that a book of shadows?'

April nodded, closed the book and handed it back to me. 'Yes,' she said softly. 'But it's a very simple one. That's the work of a beginner.' She paused, put her hand on her forehead. 'It's so evil; the sex orgies and drugs, the. . animal sacrifices.'

'You describe Bobby as a beginner; yet Esobus is mentioned in there a number of times-twice as leading a ceremony. Bobby was obviously a member of Esobus' coven. No mythological figure there: Esobus himself.' I hesitated, then added, 'I'm sure Frank was a member of the same coven.'

April looked away, and her shoulders began to tremble. I thought she was going to cry, but she didn't. The trembling stopped. She turned back to me, sighed deeply. 'No, Robert. I'm sorry, but it just doesn't make sense. You're right when you say that Esobus must exist: Frank mentioned the name, and it's in this boy's book of shadows. But the Esobus you hear stories about would never share a coven with beginners like Frank or the boy who wrote this book.'

'Don't covens accept novices?'

She shook her head emphatically. 'Any coven that Esobus headed would have only thirteen members, and every one of those members would be a sophisticated and highly skilled adept. By rights, neither Frank nor this boy should even have been able to meet a ceremonial magician, much less participate in a ritual with one.'

I absently traced my index finger along one of the symbols inscribed on the book's cover. The metal felt greasy and warm. 'What's 'scrying'?' I asked. 'It's mentioned in here a number of times.'

April smiled wanly. 'Scrying is a method of divination-looking into the future. It usually involves crystal gazing, but flame or water can also be used. The person who kept this book would have been nowhere near a point where he could even begin trying to scry.'

April's matter-of-fact tone surprised me. 'You're saying you believe there are people who can divine the future?'

She took a long time to answer. 'Yes,' she said at last. 'I believe Daniel may be able to. I scry, but I use it for meditation. You'd be surprised how deep into your mind flame or water can take you.' She blinked, added distantly: 'Maybe that's where the future is anyway-inside ourselves.' Suddenly she shuddered and gripped my arm tightly. 'Robert, can we find a telephone? I want to call the hospital.'

'Right. And I have to call the police about the body.'

I put Bobby Weiss's book of shadows on the floor of the car and drove out on Houston, where we found a pay phone. When April got out to make her call I leafed through the book again, thinking of amateur witches in a supposedly top-secret supercoven of ceremonial magicians. From the notes in the book, it was clear that the corruption and decline leading to Bobby's death had begun with his admittance to the coven.

Suddenly I was startled by a banging sound at the side of the car; April was pounding on the window, struggling frantically to open the unlocked car door. The concern and grief that had been etched in her face had turned to panic, as though she had just passed from one nightmare into another even worse. In her panic, she couldn't even operate the door latch. I quickly reached across the seat and opened the door. April fell into the car, bumping her head on the frame.

'Robert!' she gasped in a strangled, breathless voice. 'My daughter's dying!'