Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy Read online

  Magdalena also looked under every heading she could think of for directions on how to conjure Flauros and Halphas. There were no explicit directions in any of the entries she consulted. None. She was able to piece together some idea of how this kind of magic was to be done by occasional references to other conjurations and enchantments involving other demons or spirits. Using these hints and her own guesswork, she set about calculating when the most auspicious time for contacting the two demons might be. She also set about collecting the materials it seemed she would need to do these conjurations. Her stomach was tied in knots of excitement whenever she allowed herself to think about what she was about to perform.

  “Thank you, Professor Hron,” she told him when she returned the book the next week. She had taken pages and pages of notes from the dictionary and thought she had extracted every shred of information that could possibly be useful in her effort to contact the spirits.

  “You’re very welcome, Magdalena,” the professor said, taking the book and placing it to one side of his desk. “You know, I told Lida about the two conferences in August and how I want you to work with Theo,” he began.

  “Oh?” Magdalena’s eyebrows arched with curiosity in spite of herself. “What did she say?” She repressed a giggle.

  “She was very polite,” Hron told her. “But she was not pleased. I said you might need to ask her for advice on a point or two, every now and then, but that it would be good for more people in the office to get the kind of experience that comes with helping put together conferences like this. She was not happy. I’m not sure you’ll be able to get much help from her.” He smiled.

  “I’ll just have to do the best I can, professor,” Magdalena assured him. “You won’t be sorry.”

  “I’m sure I won’t, Magdalena. Did I ever forward Theo’s e-mail to you? I will be sure to do that.” I looked around his desk, as if searching for a piece of paper to make a note to himself.

  “Thank you, again, professor. I really appreciated being able to read what the dictionary had to say about Flauros and Halphas.” She stepped away from his great desk.

  “Glad you were able to find what you were looking for,” the professor acknowledged. She left him still searching for a piece of notepaper.

  That afternoon, Magdalena paused as she stepped onto the street in front of the university building. It was dusk and some of the street lights had come on. She could see a single star in the evening sky. She could see traffic on the streets at either end of the block on which she stood. She was about to turn right and start for home when her feet turned left instead. She crossed the small street and walked a few more steps.

  She stopped and looked at the building opposite from her. She had passed it many, many times. It had been the Gestapo headquarters during the Nazi occupation. Now it was simply a small office building. No plaque, no marker indicated what it had been used for or what atrocities might have been perpetrated within it. Magdalena stood on the quiet street as individuals and small knots of people walked along, ignoring her as they made their way home in the springtime dusk.

  “This is where Madame de Thebes must have been brought for questioning,” Magdalena realized as she stood looking at the small building. “She was probably taken in here and brought… to the basement, maybe?” Magdalena had never been inside and had no idea how the building was laid out or if it might have been renovated since the days when the Nazis had used it. She had no idea where in the building the Gestapo had questioned their prisoners.

  She suddenly sensed she was being watched from near the building’s entrance. A familiar woman stood there in the growing dark, tall and proud and silent in the shadows. Magdalena crossed over to the figure.

  “Madame de Thebes?” she asked the woman quietly. The figure continued to stand there, staring ahead at where Magdalena had been a moment before. But then the woman’s eyes darted briefly to one side as if to acknowledge Magdalena.

  “Is this part of the Nazi charm as well?” Magdalena asked. “I know you cannot speak but you cannot really directly communicate at all, can you?” The woman gave a quick, almost imperceptible nod.

  “What can I do for you?” Magdalena fretted. “What is it you are trying to tell me?” She glanced up and down the street as if she might ask a passerby for assistance but at that moment, there was no one else on the street with them.

  The dead woman clutched Magdalena’s arm, riveting Magdalena’s attention back on the tarot reader outside her place of execution. A tarot card fluttered from the dead woman’s hand and she was gone.

  Magdalena stumbled backwards in shock. The pressure of the dead woman’s hand on her arm had been intense. Even painful. Such a physical experience. So real. But then the woman had vanished. It took Magdalena a moment to steady herself.

  The card lay on the ground where it had fallen, face down. She bent down and picked it up, turning it over.

  It was the card Temperance.

  Magdalena hurried home and put the card on her kitchen table. She brought over her book of tarot interpretation and sat down. She found the page with an illustration matching the card on the table before her.

  “The card depicts the Archangel Raphael,” she read, her eyes glancing at the card to confirm the description. “The angel stands with one foot on land, the other in water as he pours water from one chalice to another in each of his hands.”

  She traced the words in the book with the tips of her fingers so as not to lose her place. “Raphael, whose name means ‘God heals’ is known for guidance and exorcism as well as healing. He is reported to have bound a prince of devils beneath a rock in the desert as well as wrestling with Asmodeus, another devil prince, and binding that devil as well. In the Biblical book Tobit, Raphael guides the pilgrim Tobias and then heals Tobias’ father of blindness. Raphael is said to have been the archangel who would stir a pool of water in the Jerusalem Temple on occasion and then heal the first person to enter the troubled water. He told Tobias that he was one of the seven archangels who stand directly before the Throne of God. The archangel, and the card Temperance, indicate harmony and healing that lead to balance. When reversed, the card indicates struggle with others, warfare within the self, and psychic or spiritual as well as physical illness.”

  “What is Madame de Thebes trying to tell me?” Magdalena wondered, picking up the card and staring at it. She held it upright, then upside down, then upright again as she searched for a clue in the image.

  “Does the card mean that I am to bring healing and rest to Fen’ka? The water in the image must be important somehow, given that Fen’ka’s ashes are in the river and Jarnvithja the troll seems to be her guardian. Is Madame de Thebes trying to tell me this will be difficult, a struggle? Or is she warning me that this is dangerous and that real devils might be involved?”

  Magdalena tried to look up more details about the card in other books but found little that she had not already learned.

  She wrestled with the possible messages of the card all evening and then in her dreams. But no clear answer came.

  Two nights later, Friday (the day dedicated to the Norse Frey and Freya, divinities of attraction and reproduction) going into Saturday (“the day dedicated to the Roman Saturn, one of the Dark Lords from the days older than memory,” one of her books described it), she had what she needed for her ritual. Just before midnight, she took everything out into the small garden behind her kitchen. The moon, a graceful sickle at its first quarter, hung low in the sky. Stars quietly shone above her, the North Star especially brilliant. She stood a moment facing north and took a deep breath. Then she went to work.

  She began by drawing a circle around herself in the grass with the athame, her dagger dedicated to the Craft emblazoned with a pentagram on its black handle. She placed her marble disk, incised with another five-pointed star, on the ground in the center of the circle. She set a brass brazier, lined with burning charcoal, on the marble. Next to the brazier were small piles of frankincense and various herbs.
She set her silver chalice, containing wine waiting to be mixed with some of the herbs, on the marble as well. Finally, she held her short staff of ash wood, which was tied with red cord, with one end carved to resemble the mushroom head of an engorged phallus.

  The scent of the burning charcoal rose in the clear spring night. She placed pearls of frankincense in the brazier and the sweet-smelling clouds of smoke billowed up before her. She took the athame from her sash and traced a triangle, pointing north, around the marble altar.

  She was nervous. She had never attempted anything so real or that involved such powerful entities. Her throat was dry and her voice, hardly a whisper, cracked. “Flauros, show me those best able to assist me,” she implored the demon, hoping he would reveal his secrets and answer her questions.

  The burning frankincense continued to pour smoke into the air before her. A gentle breeze wafted through the yard, parting the curling ropes of incense. It would have been difficult to see in her dark garden if the crescent moon had not been so bright. In the wavering smoke, she glimpsed the outline of a figure. Almost as if someone were standing on the other side of the wall of smoke, but she knew she was alone in the yard; the only way in or out was through the kitchen door behind her. She peered closer and almost cried out in fright.

  Through the smoke, Magdalena was certain she saw a great leopard stalking towards her, its tail lashing the air behind it. Its narrow eyes burned with fire. The sinewy spotted limbs moved gracefully. The smoke swirled in eddies around the circle Magdalena had traced and the great cat moved with it, always keeping its eyes on Magdalena and its lip curled in a snarl that exposed sharp white fangs. A deep growl rumbled in the beast’s throat. Magdalena turned, afraid to let her eyes off the beast, keeping the staff held before her as if it might defend her if the animal lunged to attack.

  But then the charcoal sizzled and hissed, sparks spurting from the brazier and the cat was gone. In its place, another figure loomed up in the smoke hovering within the triangle she had etched on the ground.

  More than a figure; a shadowy scene shifted into view in the depths of the smoky haze. A tree. In a cemetery. A rural cemetery. There seemed to be a fresh grave under the tree’s boughs. Then a young woman in a peasant skirt and vest danced across the hills, laughing and singing with a young man who also laughed, taking her in his arms. The young man was replaced by an older male figure who took the young girl’s hand and placed it in the hand of another older gentleman, whose face betrayed neither joy nor satisfaction and who seemed attired as a British Victorian. The images cascaded through the smoke now, in rapid succession: the gentleman repeatedly striking the girl, who cowered at his feet, the girl laid out in what appeared to be a shroud, the two older men walking away from the grave under the tree while the young man who had danced with the girl wept.

  Magdalena was bewildered. What was she being shown? Then she drew back, startled by the vision in the fading smoke.

  The scene had turned violent. The girl was there again, her face fierce and angry, the Victorian gentleman cowering before her. She leapt on him, pulling his face up to hers and sinking her teeth into his throat. Then the other older man was there, the girl tossing his body aside as a great gaping wound could be seen on his throat as well. The attack played itself out several more times, the girl killing a different man each time and tossing the bodies aside. Her form became haggard and worn, the garments disheveled.

  Whoever this was, Magdalena felt sure this was a woman whose assistance she needed. She took the staff and held it in the midst of the dissipating clouds of incense. She swallowed, struggling to find her voice.

  “Halphas, bring her to me!” she barked suddenly, surprising herself with the tone of authority she heard. “Bring her to me that justice for Fen’ka may be done.” She traced a circle in the smoke with the tip of the wand and the vision faded as the smoke shifted and coalesced into a shape similar to a great bird with a long beak. It spread its wings and soared into the night sky even as other coiling ropes of smoke settled and dissipated.

  Tremors of fear and excitement ran through Magdalena. This certainly seemed like more authentic witchcraft than her previous experiments with Victoria and the others. Halphas, one of the earls of Hell, who was said to send warriors to the places appointed—could it be that he would hear her and bring this woman? She cast more pearls of frankincense on the charcoal, releasing fresh billows of smoke hissing into the garden air.

  “Flauros, show me the others,” she commanded, beginning to enjoy her position as a mistress of spirits. “Show me who else I need to answer Fen’ka’s pleas.”

  The frankincense hissed on the hot charcoal. Nothing seemed to be happening this time. She pursed her lips and frowned. What was the matter? She leaned over and cast some more frankincense on the charcoal. She paused, and then added some of the herbs. A pungent, almost sickly sweet smell rose with the frankincense.

  An image wavered, and she saw the leopard again, angry and snarling, seeming ready to pounce at her from across the brazier, but before it could leap at her, the image grew hazy and resolved itself into the outline of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, the skyline of Manhattan. Where she had met the tarot reader.

  A man, cloaked and hooded, stood in the depths of the clouds pouring out of the brazier. His head was turned down so that Magdalena was unable to see his face, but a sense of great authority and power swept over her. This man was not someone to trifle with. Clearly a man of some importance. Suddenly he was naked, with his back toward her, and having intercourse with a woman stretched out on an altar draped with black velvet and adorned with candlesticks. But the woman was struggling, and he struck her face with the back of his hand before clenching his buttocks for one last powerful thrust into her. He seemed to tremble with ecstasy as she writhed in torment; two cloaked assistants came forward and held her arms down for… what? Magdalena would never know, as the scene shifted and she saw the back of the man again.

  But now she could see over his shoulder onto the table he stood before this time. There was a Host on an unfolded corporal, the linen cloth serving to catch any crumbs that might fall from the Eucharistic bread. Another knife glinted in his hand as he plunged it into the Host, which bled copiously. Was this desecration part of a Black Mass?

  She raised her wand to the smoke, trembling. This was getting to be too real, too scary. But if Flauros was showing him to her, there must be a reason. The demon would exert himself to reveal a vision to her only for some important reason. Her voice quivered this time as she repeated, “Halphas, bring him to me.” The staff trembled in her hand as she traced the circle in the air, dissipating the cloud and its disturbing revelations. The half-image of a stork lazily flapped its broad, outstretched wings and vanished over the buildings and walls surrounding Magdalena’s garden. Were her conjurations powerful enough to influence, let alone command, someone of Halphas’ stature? Part of her hoped not.

  She cast more frankincense on the coals and new clouds of smoke streamed into the air. She began to say the demon’s name and the leopard was there again, across the brazier, before she could pronounce more than the first syllable. The cat snarled and growled, pacing from one side of the garden to the other. Magdalena was frightened. She held the staff and pointed directly at the hazy cat. “No, Flauros… we are here to aid Fen’ka. Show me… show me who else must be summoned!”

  But the leopard roared and jumped across the brazier, its fangs bared. “No!” Magdalena cried, lashed the staff as if it were a riding crop, the thin wand slicing the air with a harsh whistle. The cat vanished.

  She was suddenly frightened of anyone else the demon might show her tonight. “Surely these two will be enough assistance!” Magdalena decided. But she needed to finish the conjuration to have some idea when to expect meeting these two figures. She knelt on the ground before the burning censer on the pentacle and pulled a short stack of cards from her pocket.

  She knew that the Major Trumps of the tarot de
ck could be used to identify dates, like birthdays. She had the twenty-two Major Trump cards with her now. She didn’t trust herself to accurately read a single card to determine when she would meet those Flauros had shown her and Halphas was bringing her, so she planned to draw three cards and take the average, as it were. If she drew the Fool, which was always counted as “0,” she would understand that as meaning now—or at least this month. The other cards, numbered from “I” to “XXI,” would indicate which month of the year she would meet those Halphas was binging. Or at least she thought so.

  Magdalena picked up a pinch of herbs and ground them into the chalice between her thumb and forefinger. Rosemary, basil, and mint. All associated with increasing clarity of thought. Raising the chalice to her lips, she paused and took a deep breath. “Flauros, when will I meet those coming to aid Fen’ka?” She sipped the wine and set the chalice down. A wave of exhilaration swept over her. Primarily interested in the numerical values of the cards she would draw, she had also been memorizing the basic meanings of the Major Trumps. What else was she about to learn?

  She held the cards above the censer in the remnants of the fragrant smoke. She thought she heard the distant flapping of the stork’s wings in the night, but it might have been only a breeze wafting down from the castle atop the hill. Then, she shuffled the twenty-two cards a few times, held them in the smoke again, and cut the deck. She drew the first card. It was the card Strength, number VIII. It depicted a woman, crowned and girded with flowers, holding the jaws of a lion.